Senator: Obama ‘Perilously Close’ to Impeachment (+video)

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coburn1-compressedThe momentum to remove the president is growing rapidly, as almost every day another lawmaker raises the possibility of impeaching President Obama.

Now, it’s Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla, who said Wednesday the president is getting “perilously close” to qualifying for impeachment.

Speaking at the Muskogee Civic Center in Oklahoma, the senator said, “What you have to do is you have to establish the criteria that would qualify for proceedings against the president, and that’s called impeachment.”

“That’s not something you take lightly, and you have to use a historical precedent of what that means. I think there’s some intended violation of the law in this administration, but I also think there’s a ton of incompetence, of people who are making decisions.”

A constituent then responded, “Even if there is incompetence, the IRS forces me to abide by the law.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama: Feds Will Define What a Good College Is, Punish and Reward Accordingly (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Speaking at the University of Buffalo, President Barack Obama today unveiled an ambitious new plan for the federal government to create a national rating system that will define what a good college is and financially reward or punish colleges depending on how they rank in the government’s system.

He said he intends to have the rating system in placed by the fall of 2015 and intends to work with Congress to enact legislation linking federal aid to colleges to the rating system.

As outlined by Obama, this rating system would look at essentially materialistic and financial characteristics of a college as opposed to intellectual and moral ones.

For example, as the president described it, the rating system will not measure how many of a school’s graduates go on to become exemplary and virtuous in the conduct of their personal and public lives, but it will measure things such as “how many students graduate on time,” “how well do those graduates do in the work force,” whether the college is “helping students from all kinds of backgrounds succeed,” and “how successful colleges are at enrolling and graduating students who are on Pell Grants.”

Federal Pell Grants are gifts of cash–not loans–that the federal government gives to some students, but not others. They are not based on academic merit but on whether a student’s income and his or her parents’ income is low enough to qualify the family as what the Department of Education calls “low-income.”

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Authorities: Iowa Couple Shot, Killed Escaped Inmate (+video)

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iowaLaw enforcement authorities said Tuesday that an Iowa couple shot and killed an escaped inmate after being held in their home for four hours.

Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation Special Agent Mitch Mortvedt said Rodney Long forced his way into the couple’s home at 2609 Highland Avenue about 10:15 p.m. and held them for the next four hours.

Jerome and Carolyn Mauderly said Long was armed with a semi automatic handgun. He had also taken their phones.

Jerome, 71, and Carolyn, 66, decided to defend themselves, Mortvedt said. Jerome shot Long with his shotgun. They were not seriously hurt in the incident.

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NSA Collected Non-Terrorism-Related Emails (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

By Reid J. Epstein.

The National Security Agency began improperly collecting Americans’ electronic communications that had no connection to terrorism in 2008, but the government didn’t learn of the problem until 2011, senior administration officials said Wednesday.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper will release three documents that reveal the extent of the error, posting them on a new tumblr page.

The NSA revealed the improper collection of emails to the FISA court in 2011, which demanded a halt to the practice. The officials said the problem was technological and not malicious.

Congress, the administration officials said, knew when it authorized the surveillance programs in 2008 that some Americans would inadvertently have their communications intercepted.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

NSA ‘Goes After Man who Mocked Agency’

By Joe Kovacs.

The National Security Agency, the secretive federal department under fire for spying on U.S. citizens, is now accused of crushing the free-speech rights of a businessman clowning around about the NSA.

LibertyManiacs.com, a company that markets “freedom products for liberty lovers,” says the NSA is using a claim of copyright infringement to stop it from selling T-shirts and other products making fun of the Big Brother agency.

“Two months ago the NSA’s lawyers came after our parodies of the rogue agency and forced our host to take them down,” the company said Friday on its Facebook page.

At issue is use of the NSA logo, which was partially altered by LibertyManiacs owner Dan McCall. He kept the name of the agency and most of the artwork intact, but changed the bottom portion from “United States of America” to the laugh-inspiring “Peeping while you’re sleeping.”

Underneath the doctored logo is the phrase “The NSA, the only part of government that actually listens.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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NSA collected thousands of emails from Americans, rebuked by court

By Fox News.

The National Security Agency was rebuked by a secret court in 2011 for collecting thousands of emails and other online details from Americans with no ties to terrorism, according to court opinions which were declassified for the first time on Wednesday.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence took the unusual step of declassifying more than 100 pages of documents, amid the escalating public debate about government surveillance programs. The release comes several days after a report showed that the NSA had violated privacy rules and overstepped its authority thousands of times.

Some of those incidents were minor, but the documents released Wednesday detail major compliance problems.

In 2011, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was notified of a problem involving “upstream collection,” which is the collection of Internet traffic outside of the service providers. The NSA was collecting bundled email communications under a provision which focuses on foreign Internet traffic. The NSA, though, was not effectively segregating all the traffic from Americans.

The court rebuked the NSA for the violation.

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Hasan Says ‘Illegal War’ Provoked Fort Hood Massacre (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

The soldier on trial for the 2009 Fort Hood shooting rampage rested his case Wednesday without calling any witnesses, but later told the judge that the attack was provoked because “these were deploying soldiers who were going to engage in an illegal war.”

Maj. Nidal Hasan is representing himself but told a military judge Wednesday that he wouldn’t be calling any witnesses in his defense.

The jury was dismissed after the prosecution asked for more time to prepare jury instructions and logistics before closing arguments.

But after jurors were dismissed, Hasan told the judge, Col. Tara Osborn, that the jury shouldn’t have the option of convicting him on the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter.

“I would like to agree with the prosecution that it wasn’t done under the heat of sudden passion,” Hasan said. “There was adequate provocation — that these were deploying soldiers that were going to engage in an illegal war.”

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Duck Dynasty Star Rails Against Abortion Culture in America: “What in the World Happened to Us?” (+video)

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Duck DynastyBehind the beard and camouflage, Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson is an incredibly insightful man with a penchant for straight talk. In a video posted on YouTube in January, Robertson is seen giving a speech in Pennsylvania discussing the abortion culture in America, among other things.

Robertson stated what we need more in our day are people like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson who understood that our right to life comes from God. “I’m with George Washington. I’m in the same camp as George Washington…That big Washington Monument in DC. You know what the capstone says on top of it? Praise God,” he said. The Bible and our own founding document, the Declaration of Independence, make the right to life emphatically clear.

“We have been endowed by our creator, according to Thomas Jefferson, with certain unalienable rights. Among these are life,” Robertson exhorted, adding, “I’ll tell you, it didn’t take us 150 years, we started ripping babies out of wombs. They should have listened to Thomas Jefferson—you have a God-given right to live inside your mother—come on!…What in the world happened to us?”

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MSNBC Pundit: Opposition to Gun Control is Neo-Confederate (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Photo Credit: YouTube

Supporters of Second Amendment rights are motivated by neo-Confederate beliefs, according to MNSBC contributor Joy Reid.

“There’s this sort of neo-Confederate thread that runs through this pro-gun movement and NRA movement,” she said this afternoon while discussing the recall elections for Democratic state lawmakers in Colorado that were spurred by their support for gun-control legislation…

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How Does ‘Hope and Change’ Look Five Years Later? Here’s Chris Matthew’s Surprising Answer (+video)

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews was cornered into admitting that President Barack Obama does indeed have his shortcomings. The TV host, who has previously referred to the president as the “perfect” American, father and husband, was asked by a GOP strategist on Tuesday morning: How does “hope and change” look five years later?

“What people signed up for, what people voted for, was the hope and change,” former John McCain aide Nicolle Wallace said. “How’s it look on the table five years later?”

After being evasive at first and talking about past presidents, Matthews ultimately addressed Obama’s “shortcoming.” He also acknowledged that he had been duped by politicians and been let down in the past.

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Fed-Up Restaurant Owner Foils Armed Robbery in One of the Best Ways: ‘I Couldn’t Just Stand Here and Watch Him Take My Money’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: dawhitfield

Photo Credit: dawhitfield

They say “don’t bring a knife to a gun fight” — so this restaurant owner didn’t. Instead, he armed himself with a pot of scalding hot oil.

On Monday afternoon, the owner of a local corner deli foiled a robbery by hurling a pot of burning oil at an armed robber as the thief attempted to open the cash register, according to NJ.com.

The owner, who reportedly asked not to be identified, said he had often thought of weaponizing cooking oil in such a situation.

“Frankly speaking, I did think, ‘If anything happens, I’ll throw hot oil on somebody,’” he reportedly said, with a laugh. “But I never thought it would really happen.”

Watch a local news clip, courtesy of WABC-TV:

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California Wants Small-Business Owners To Pay Back $120 Million In Tax Breaks (+video)

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Photo Credit: Prayitno

Photo Credit: Prayitno

Small-business investors in California were promised big breaks five years ago, but now they’re being told to pay up, instead after a court ruling.

After following the law, many of them are getting hit with tax bills as high as $250,000.

“When we make a promise, we have to uphold it,” said Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Redondo Beach.

But that is not what the state government appears to be doing. Small-business owners are getting hefty tax breaks for tax credits they already got five years ago.

“They relied on California law as it was written, that they would get a tax break if they invested in certain kinds of businesses,” Lieu said.

Read more from this story HERE.