Initial Jobless Claims Slump Due to Underreporting by Two States (+video)

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Photo Credit: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Photo Credit: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Jobless claims in the U.S. declined last week to the lowest level since April 2006 as work on computer systems in two states caused those employment agencies to report fewer applications.

First-time claims for unemployment insurance fell by 31,000 to 292,000 in the week ended Sept. 7, which also included the Labor Day holiday, a Labor Department report showed today in Washington. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey called for 330,000 applications.

The decrease in filings doesn’t signal a change in job-market conditions because most of it was caused by computer-network conversions in the two states, according to a Labor Department spokesman. The pace of job cuts has waned since the end of last year, setting the stage for faster payroll and income growth that would help propel consumer spending.

“Stronger job growth may be on the horizon,” said Millan Mulraine, director of U.S. rates research at TD Securities in New York. “When we start seeing improvement in the labor market, I think that will provide another tailwind for confidence, and spending, going forward.”

Stocks were little changed as investors weighed the prospect for cuts in Federal Reserve stimulus and watched developments on Syria. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell less than 0.1 percent to 1,688.54 at 11:01 a.m. in New York.

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Three Men ‘Illegally’ Arrested for Openly Carrying Civil War Era ‘Black Powder’ Pistols in Texas (+videos)

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Photo Credit: YouTube

Three people were reportedly arrested on Friday for openly carrying Civil War-era pistols during a pro-gun protest outside the Texas Capitol. Gun rights activists tell TheBlaze the arrests were unlawful as it is legal in Texas to openly carry a pre-1899 antique firearm.

Terry Louis Holcomb, 44, identified as a Huntsville-area pastor, and Scott Douglas Smith, 50, a military veteran from San Antonio, and Gary Hayes, a quadriplegic, were reportedly arrested by state troopers in Austin and charged with disorderly conduct, which is defined, by law, as an action with a firearm “calculated to alarm.”

However, witnesses say the men, one of which was in a wheelchair, had their “black powder” pistols holstered and weren’t causing alarm in any way. More than a dozen other gun-rights activists openly carrying rifles walked free.

Under Texas law, a gun manufactured before 1899 isn’t even considered a “firearm,” therefore not subject to open carry laws…


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Flash Flooding Kills 3 in Colorado (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Massive flash flooding along Colorado’s picturesque Front Range mountains, triggered by what the National Weather Service termed “biblical rainfall amounts,” killed at least three people Thursday, cut off small towns and forced countless residents to scramble for high ground.

Boulder, home to the University of Colorado, was among the hardest hit by the devastating waters. Classes were canceled, hundreds of students evacuated and a quarter of the campus buildings damaged by rising water, authorities said.

“This is not an ordinary day. It is not an ordinary disaster,” Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle said, describing walls of water as high as 20 feet that tore down mountainsides and canyons already scarred and denuded from wildfires.

“All the preparation in the world … can’t put people up those canyons while these walls of water are coming down,” he said.

President Obama signed an emergency declaration Thursday night, which frees up federal aid and allows the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate disaster relief efforts.

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Col. West: Benghazi Can’t Be ‘the New Normal’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Photo Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images

“We abandoned four Americans who were under attack, and that’s not who we are as a people. That’s not who we are as a nation,” a somber, but determined, Col. Allen West told WND.

“We, as a people, have to stand up, because we can not settle for this and come to believe the new normal is that an ambassador can call up and say ‘We’re under attack’ and have elected officials do nothing about it.”

West was in the nation’s capital to speak at the Justice for Benghazi Rally on the one-year anniversary of the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, and the twelfth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.

The former Florida congressman told the crowd President Obama lacked a sense of “moral obligation” about the deaths of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and security personnel who “ran to the sound of the guns, while others on that night ran to bed.”

President Obama’s representatives have repeatedly refused to divulge what he was doing the night of the attacks.

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Firefighters Make Stand Against NJ Boardwalk Blaze (+video)

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Photo Credit: ABC News

Photo Credit: ABC News

Firefighters dug a trench and tore out a section of Jersey Shore boardwalk in an effort to prevent a furious, wind-whipped blaze from jumping to an area just rebuilt after Superstorm Sandy.

By late evening, officials were voicing hopes that the plan was working and the fire that raged on the boardwalk in Seaside Park, N.J., was dying down.

“The threat of it moving at this point is minimal and emergency workers did an amazing job,” said John Camera, borough administrator in the neighboring boardwalk town of Seaside Heights, according to ABC News Radio..

“The fire appears to be under control,” Camera said. “They’ll be people stationed there probably for another day or more and they expect that there may be controlled burning.”

At one point, the blaze went beyond 10 alarms to an “all county call,” according to ABC News New York station WABC. It destroyed a length of boardwalk containing perhaps 30 businesses, officials said, near the same stretch of sand where a rollercoaster landed upright in the ocean after Sandy hit the coastline in October 2012.

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‘Allah is a Lie!’ “Muhammad is a Pedophile!’: ‘Million Muslim March’ Met with Counter-Protest (+videos)

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Photo Credit: YouTube

Demonstrators at the “Million Muslim March” in Washington, D.C. Wednesday were met with counter-protesters who shouted “Allah is a lie!” and other charges on the 12th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

“Why is there so much security at the airport? Thank a Muslim. Why are there so many wars in the Middle East? Thank a Muslim,” one counter-protester shouted into a bullhorn.

“Muhammad was a pedophile!” the same counter-protester shouted at the pro-Muslim demonstrators. “Muhammad curse be his name married a seven year old girl. If Muhammad was alive today that prophet Muhammad would be on the Jerry Springer show.”

The counter-protesters also lashed out at individuals participating in the “2 Million Bikers to DC” rally.


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Trader Joe’s To Drop Health Coverage For Part-Time Workers Under Obamacare (+video)

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Photo Credit: goodiesfirst

Photo Credit: goodiesfirst

After extending health care coverage to many of its part-time employees for years, Trader Joe’s has told workers who log fewer than 30 hours a week that they will need to find insurance on the Obamacare exchanges next year, according to a confidential memo from the grocer’s chief executive.

In the memo to staff dated Aug. 30, Trader Joe’s CEO Dan Bane said the company will cut part-timers a check for $500 in January and help guide them toward finding a new plan under the Affordable Care Act. The company will continue to offer health coverage to workers who carry 30 hours or more on average.

The law mandates that companies with 50 employees or more offer coverage to such full-time employees, though the Obama administration has chosen to delay that rule for a year.

Trader Joe’s has won kudos for offering its health care, dental and vision plans to part-time workers at a reasonable price — a rarity in an industry known for low pay and scant benefits. But with low-wage workers eligible for tax subsidies to buy health insurance next year, the company has apparently calculated that offering medical coverage to part-timers who work 18 hours or more is no longer worth the cost.

“Depending on income you may earn outside of Trader Joe’s” — i.e., another job — “we believe that with the $500 from Trader Joe’s and the tax credits available under the ACA, many of you should be able to obtain health care coverage at very little if any net cost to you,” Bane wrote in the memo.


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Are Terrorists Setting U.S. Wildfires? (+video)

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Photo Credit: KRON-TV

Photo Credit: KRON-TV

As the 2013 season of devastating wildfires continues to rage across the American West, the question of arson as a form of major terrorism is again being raised.

Already this year, 35,440 reported fires have burned a total of 3.9 million acres, with a quarter-million acres scorched the iconic Yosemite National Park.

Large blazes continue to burn in several states, with six alive in Idaho, five each in California and Montana, and one each in Alaska, Louisiana, Oregon, Texas and Washington.

The National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, says at this time last year, 45,278 fires had burned 7.9 million acres, and in 2011, there were 55,619 fires devastating 7.2 million acres.

In July 2012, William Scott, a former National Security Agency official and Aviation Week editor, told the American Center for Democracy that terrorists are using fire as a tactical weapon of war.

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“Impeachment’ Cited By Growing Number In House Of Representatives (+video)

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Photo Credit: Examiner

Photo Credit: Examiner

A 15th member of Congress has discussed the impeachment of Barack Obama, noting that he’s confident the U.S. House, if it came to a vote, “would probably impeach the president.”

The comments come from Rep. Bill Flores, R-Texas, who was speaking at a recent town hall meeting.

“I’ve looked at the president. I think he’s violated the Constitution. I think he’s violated the Bill of Rights,” he said.

He said at some point a decision must be made, and he said, “I think if the House had an impeachment vote it would probably impeach the president.”

But he noted the 46 members of the GOP in the U.S. Senate, where an impeached president would be put on trial.

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W.H. Sends Out Rice, Who Misled on Benghazi, to Make Case for Syria (+video)

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Photo Credit: The Cable

Photo Credit: The Cable

Susan Rice famously blamed the Benghazi terror attack that took the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, on an Internet video. She further said the terror attack occurred after a spontaneous protest over that anti-Muslim film got out of hand, instead of blaming the al Qaeda backed terrorists responsible for the murders.

“The White House has had quite enough of the controversy over ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, the misleading talking points she used in TV interviews about the jihadist attacks in Benghazi, and the Obama administration’s contradictory narrative about those attacks,” Steve Hayes reported in December.

But today, Rice will be called upon again to make a public case for the White House ..

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