Smith and Epson: Congressman Urges Legislation to Renew Ban on Printer-Made Plastic Guns That Don’t Exist

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New York Democratic Rep. Steve Israel is calling for legislation to renew the federal ban on plastic guns, according to his official congressional website.

“Recent reports have pointed to the new possibility of building guns at home using a 3-D printer,” Israel’s website states. “Right now, plastic guns are illegal under the Undetectable Firearms Act, but this law is set to expire next year.”

3-D printers, which have been available since the 1980s, take two-dimensional plans and convert them to three-dimensional objects, which are then usually made from plastic.

Homemade plastic firearms are difficult for airport X-ray machines to detect. They also cannot be registered or traced, because they lack identification numbers.

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Full-Court Press: Global Warming Hysteria Pushed by National Intelligence Council and Department of Defense?

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photo credit: donkeyhotey

A new U.S. intelligence community report finds that climate change will fuel new conflicts and competition for resources in coming decades.

The federal National Intelligence Council’s “Global Trends 2030” report issued Monday follows Defense Department analyses that have similarly called climate change an emerging security risk.

“Demand for food, water, and energy will grow by approximately 35, 40, and 50 percent respectively owing to an increase in the global population and the consumption patterns of an expanding middle class. Climate change will worsen the outlook for the availability of these critical resources,” the report states.

Elsewhere, it notes that climate change is among the factors that will drive conflict in some regions.

“[M]any developing and fragile states — such as in Sub-Saharan Africa — face increasing strains from resource constraints and climate change, pitting different tribal and ethnic groups against one another and accentuating the separation of various identities,” the report states.

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Majority of Democrats Like Socialism

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Photo credit: DonkeyHotey

On the strength of a capitalist economic system, America created a material standard of living for the world to envy while providing its citizens with high levels of personal freedom. But today capitalism, and attendant freedom, are being systematically dismantled in America (and being depth-charged in Europe), while understanding and appreciation of these things are receding. Gallup provides proof of this, and confirms conservatives’ fears and suspicions.

Loyal elves in the media wing of the Democratic Party establishment — aka the mainstream media — hyperventilate when Barack Obama is identified as a socialist, or the Democratic Party is accused of promoting socialist policies. “Vile and unfair accusations,” they wail, before retiring to their fainting couches.

But if a survey released last week by Gallup is any indication, it’s hard to see what all the indignation is about. A majority of people — 53 percent — who describe themselves as Democrats or leaning Democrat, admit to Gallup’s pulse takers that they have a positive image of socialism. Only two percent more — 55 — say they are positive about capitalism. A robust 75 percent of Democrats say they have a positive image of the federal government.

These numbers should not surprise anyone who has talked to a Democrat over the last couple of decades. A majority of the political party currently in the ascendancy in America holds a positive view of an economic system that has been tried countless times in countless places, has never delivered prosperity, but has always diminished personal and economic freedom.

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Many Freed Illegal Alien Criminals Avoid Deportation, Strike Again

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Qian Wu thought the man who brutally attacked her was gone forever. She was sure that Huang Chen, a Chinese citizen who slipped into America on a ship and stayed in the country illegally, would be deported as soon as he got out of jail for choking, punching, and pointing a knife at her in 2006.

But China refused to take Chen back. So, after jailing Chen on and off for three years in Texas, immigration officials believed they were out of options and did what they have done with thousands of criminals like him.

They quietly let him go.

Nobody warned Wu, or prosecutors, or the public. The petite, 46-year-old woman learned Chen was still here when he stormed into her unlocked apartment one day in January 2010 and announced, “I bet you didn’t expect to see me.” Terrified, she called the police, and he fled. But for two weeks, Chen was free to stalk her and finally, to catch her as she hurried home with milk and bread one afternoon.

Chen then finished what he had started earlier, bashing Wu on the head with a hammer and slashing her with a knife. As she lay crumpled in a grimy stairwell, he ripped out her heart and a lung and fled with his macabre trophies…

Wu is just one casualty of an immigration system cloaked in a blanket of secrecy that the Founding Fathers could not have imagined, a blanket that isn’t lifted even when life is at risk. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its sister agencies have emerged as the largest law enforcement network in the United States since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and they are increasingly dealing with criminals, but they play by very different rules than the local police, prosecutors, or even the FBI.

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Navy SEAL Killed in Rescue of American Doctor in Afghanistan

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A U.S. Navy SEAL was killed early Sunday in the rescue of an American doctor who was kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan, defense officials tell NBC News.

The Navy SEAL was wounded in the rescue operation and later died, according to a senior defense official.

The rescue operation was launched when coalition forces reported that Dr. Dilip Joseph was in imminent danger. Joseph, who worked with the non-profit Morning Star Development of Colorado Springs, was kidnapped Wednesday along with two Afghan staff members — one is part of the medical team, the other part of the support team. Joseph has been the non-profit’s medical adviser for three years.

Morning Star said the team of three had been returning from a visit to one of its rural medical clinics when the kidnappers stopped their vehicle. The three were then taken to a mountainous area about 50 miles from the Pakistan border, Morning Star said.

Contact between the hostages, their captors and the non-profit’s crisis management team started immediately, according to a statement on Morning Star’s website. On Saturday evening, two of the hostages were released. The two men then made their way out of the area and were taken to a police station.

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The Federal Government Now Borrowing 46 Cents Out of Every Dollar It Spends

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photo credit: david gaines

After all of his seemingly endless campaign stops and harsh rhetoric about the rich not paying “their fair share,” it turns out that the president’s proposed tax hikes on “the rich” will only raise enough revenue to run the government for about eight days. But that doesn’t really matter, of course, because it’s all about “fairness.” In other words, if Washington lawmakers are serious about reducing the federal deficit — as they claim to be — the real solution is that they must stop borrowing and spending money we don’t have. We cannot carry on like this indefinitely:

The federal government borrowed 46 cents of every dollar it has spent so far in fiscal year 2013, which began Oct. 1, according to the latest data the Congressional Budget Office released Friday.

The government notched a $172 billion deficit in November, and is already nearly $300 billion in the hole through the first two months of fiscal year 2013, underscoring just how deep the government’s budget problems are as lawmakers try to negotiate a year-end deal to avoid a budgetary “fiscal cliff.”

Higher spending on mandatory items such as Social Security, Medicare and interest on the debt led the way in boosting spending compared with the previous year, which also highlights the trouble spots Congress and President Obama are struggling to grapple with.

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Boehner Blasted Over GOP Purge

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Given everything on his plate, you wouldn’t expect John Boehner to face an uproar over the likes of Justin Amash and Tim Huelskamp . . .

But many on the right are furious with the House speaker for purging them and two other conservative Republicans from key committee assignments. That may be inside baseball, but these folks are keeping score.

Boehner was retaliating—there’s no other word for it—against the lawmakers for repeatedly voting against the GOP leadership. He served notice at a closed-door meeting that rank-and-file votes are being “watched” by his team, according to The Hill . . .

Erick Erickson, the influential RedState blogger and CNN commentator, sounds supremely frustrated: “Conservatives are either going to hang together or separately. Right now they are getting played because Boehner, McConnell, and the like are sure the conservative movement has become a paper tiger. And, to be honest, conservatives have shown them this is true.”

What conservatives need to do, he says, is pump money and field challengers against establishment candidates: “Either start blowing stuff up or shut up.”

Read full story HERE.

Obama’s Money Plans Backed by Communists

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The Communist Party USA is backing Barack Obama’s position on the coming fiscal cliff, and claims its economic program “will unfold in the coming year” with the reelection of Obama and continued Democrat control of the U.S. Senate.

The statement came from Joelle Fishman, chairwoman of the Connecticut Communist Party, during a recent conference call on the upcoming fiscal cliff.

The conference call titled, “Don’t Bargain with People’s Lives” featured an economic report by CPUSA national vice-chair Jarvis Tanner, who said Obama’s demands in the fiscal cliff debate are exactly what the country needs.

Republicans have said any revenue increases must be accompanied by spending cuts. However, Obama has countered by saying he wants Congress to raise taxes more, extend unemployment benefits beyond the current 99 week limit, pass an additional $50 billion in stimulus spending, and grant him authority to raise the debt limit whenever he wants.

Tanner says the president’s position shows that unlike the Republicans, he is making a “serious proposal” and he is backing Obama’s proposals.

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Liberals Suggest that Obama Mint Two Trillion Dollar Coins to End Fiscal Crisis

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If President Obama wants to avoid an economic calamity next year, he could always show up at a press conference bearing two shiny platinum coins, worth… $1 trillion apiece.

Okay, that sounds utterly insane. But ever since last year, some economists and legal scholars have suggested that the “platinum coin option” is one way to defuse a crisis if Congress can’t or won’t lift the debt ceiling soon. At least in theory.

The U.S. government is, after all, facing a real problem. The Treasury Department will hit its $16.4 trillion borrowing limit by next February at the latest. Unless Congress reaches an agreement to raise that borrowing limit, the government will no longer be able to borrow enough money to pay all its bills.

Last year, Republicans in Congress resisted lifting the debt ceiling until the last minute — and then only in exchange for spending cuts. Panic ensued. So what happens if there’s another showdown this year?

Enter the platinum coins. Thanks to an odd loophole in current law, the U.S. Treasury is technically allowed to mint as many coins made of platinum as it wants and can assign them whatever value it pleases.

Under this scenario, the U.S. Mint would produce (say) a pair of trillion-dollar platinum coins. The president orders the coins to be deposited at the Federal Reserve. The Fed then moves this money into Treasury’s accounts. And just like that, Treasury suddenly has an extra $2 trillion to pay off its obligations for the next two years — without needing to issue new debt. The ceiling is no longer an issue.

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Despite Tax Increase, California State Revenues in Freefall

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California State Controller John Chiang has announced that total state revenue for the month of November 2012 fell $806.8 million, or 10.8%, below budget.

Democrats thought they could hammer “the rich” by convincing voters to pass Proposition 30 to create the highest state income tax in the nation. But it now appears that high income earners have already “voted with their feet” by moving themselves and their businesses out of state, resulting in over $1 billion shortfall in corporate and income taxes last month and the beginning of a new financial crisis.

Passage of Proposition 30 set off euphoria and expectations of higher spending for public employees. The California Teachers’ Association (CTA) trumpeted: “California students and working families won a clear victory today as voters clearly demonstrated their willingness to invest in our public schools and colleges and also rejected a deceptive ballot measure aimed at silencing educators, other workers and their unions.”

State bureaucrats immediately ramped up deficit spending far beyond the state’s $6 billion annual tax increase, with the Departments of Health Services and Developmental Services increasing this month’s spending by over $1 billion versus last year. The lower tax collection and higher spending drove the State’s deficit after the tax increase to $2.7 billion for the first 5 months of this fiscal year.

Read more from this story HERE.