Houston Police Investigate Claims of Eight People Held Captive in ‘Dungeon’ For Up to Ten Years – UPDATED

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Photo Credit: YouTubeBy Tom Dart. Police in Houston are investigating claims that four men have been held as long-term captives in dire conditions at a house in the city.

Officers received a call at about 8.25am local time Friday morning alleging that several men were being held against their will in a converted garage at a single-story home on Whitecastle Lane, 10 miles north of downtown.

Police arrived and found four men aged roughly from 50 to 80 living there. Three appeared to be malnourished and were taken to a local hospital. They had been at the house for varying lengths of time, with one claiming he had been kept there for about a decade. Officials are investigating whether the men are homeless invalids or military veterans who were forced to hand over their welfare money.

“All four said they had been enticed to that location with the promise of beer and cigarettes and not been allowed to leave,” a police department spokesman told the Guardian. Several women with apparent mental disabilities were also found to be living there, he added.

One man who does not live at the property was detained for questioning and has not been charged, pending further investigation, the spokesman said.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Houston Police DepartmentGrandson, 31 of woman who owned Houston house where three starved and abused men were kept in ‘prison room’ for a DECADE is charged

By Jessica Jerreat. The grandson of the owner of a Houston house, where three malnourished men were discovered living in ‘deplorable’ conditions on Friday, has been charged.

Walter Jones has been charged with injury to the elderly by act, and injury to the elderly by omission.

Jones is suspected of keeping the men, including a military veteran, in a filthy garage while he claimed their disability welfare and veterans’ checks.

The alleged victims, who had to be taken from the house on stretchers because they were so malnourished, told police they had been lured to the house with the promise of cigarettes and food, according to CNN.

Once inside the house they were not allowed to leave, police spokesman Jodi Silva said. She added: ‘They were apparently given scraps to eat. Very little food was being provided to them.’ Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Takes Over White House Press Briefing to School the Nation On Trayvon Martin and Racism (+video)

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Photo Credit: globalgrind.comObama Takes Over White House Press Briefing To Speak On Trayvon Martin

By Jennifer Bendery. President Barack Obama made an unexpected appearance at Friday’s White House press briefing to talk about the outcome of the Trayvon Martin case and, more broadly, how the United States continues to grapple with racial bias.

“When Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is, Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago,” Obama said.

Obama said he understands why people are so upset that George Zimmerman was found not guilty for shooting and killing Martin, an unarmed teen who was walking down the street in Sanford, Fla., in February 2012. Zimmerman, a neighborhood watchman, pursued Martin for no clear reason and ultimately shot him in what he said was self-defense. Read more from this story HERE.

Here’s a full video of Obama’s remarks:

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Obama Says that the Disproportionate Criminal Conduct of Black Young Men is an “Excuse” for Treating Them Differently

By Neil Munro. President Barack Obama took the White House podium Friday [and] acknowledged that African-American males have a higher-than-average crime rate, shortly before he dismissed the data as an “excuse” for treating black youths differently.

“Now, this isn’t to say that the African-American community is naive about the fact that African-American young men are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system, that they are disproportionately both victims and perpetrators of violence,” he said.

He immediately suggested that Americans should ignore the data. ”The fact that a lot of African-American boys are painted with a broad brush and the excuse is given, well, there are these statistics out there that show that African-American boys are more violent — using that as an excuse to then see sons treated differently causes pain,” he said.

A November 2011 report by the Justice Department said that young African-American men comprise only 1 percent of the population, but commit 27 percent of the murders. Read more from this story HERE.

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Obama Calls For Review Of ‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws After Trayvon Martin Verdict

By Amanda Terkel. President Barack Obama is calling for a review of the controversial Stand Your Ground laws that were at the heart of the killing of Trayvon Martin.

“I think it would be useful for us to examine some state and local laws to see if it — if they are designed in such a way that they may encourage the kinds of altercations and confrontations and tragedies that we saw in the Florida case, rather than defuse potential altercations,” Obama told reporters in a surprise press conference at the White House on Friday.

Florida was the first state in the nation to pass a law that allows an individual who feels threatened to “stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force.” There are now about 30 states with such statutes. Read more from this story HERE.

Mark Levin: Obama has been FDR, Lincoln, Reagan and now Trayvon Martin (+video)

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On his Friday night radio program, conservative talk show host Mark Levin had some harsh criticism for President Barack Obama and his remarks on the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin…

“We have a president who is balkanizing the nation, as is his cabinet,” he continued. “This wasn’t about Barack Obama. This was a trial in a courtroom in Florida. And now all weekend long the question is going to be, ‘What did you think about what Obama said? It was good. It was bad.’ So suddenly it’s about Obama.

Obama had been Franklin Roosevelt. He’s been Abraham Lincoln. He’s been Ronald Reagan. And now he’s been Trayvon Martin. But he’s none of them. He didn’t live like Trayvon Martin, nor is he any of those three presidents. This president could have been a great president — policies aside — by his temperament, by what he said, by his respect for the American people. This president could have been a man that could have been admired. Instead, he is what he is.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Despite Obama’s Smear Campaign, Rep. Issa is Unrelenting

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Photo Credit: APThe Watchdog: Rep. Darrell Issa takes on the IRS

By Susan Ferrechio. Rep. Darrell Issa likes to show visitors to his office a bullet-riddled body-armor plate that was manufactured in his district.

He holds up a new model that offers better protection for soldiers, but cautions that even the latest prototypes have limits.

“Ultimately, these things are not bulletproof,” Issa said as he examined a shield. “When you are getting riveted, you’ve got to get out of there. You don’t stand there like one of those movie stars, taking bullets in the chest forever.”

It’s a fitting metaphor for Issa, Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, whose aggressive style of taking on government agencies, most recently the Internal Revenue Service, has drawn a barrage of hit pieces in the news media.

Some of the attacks, which delved into his arrests for alleged car thefts as a youth, were purportedly orchestrated by the White House press office, according to Mark Leibovich in his new book, “This Town,” about the self-absorbed Washington media. Read more from this story HERE.

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Rep. Issa blasts Justice inaction on tax snooping, sees dangers in health care law

By Stephen Dinan. House oversight committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa said Thursday he’s baffled that the Justice Department declined to prosecute a government employee who apparently knowingly pried into tax records of a political candidate or donor, and said there should be a way for victims to know their rights have been violated.

He also said letting state officials have access to federal tax records can be dangerous, and that’s one reason to try to rein in the health care law, which will expand access to states that plan on running their own insurance exchanges.

Mr. Issa made the comments after The Washington Times reported this week that the Treasury inspector general for tax administration had found at least four cases in which a candidate’s or donor’s tax information was accessed improperly.

In one case, the investigator said the violation was willful and referred it to the Justice Department, which declined to pursue the case — a move Mr. Issa said was worrisome.

“We are not just disappointed, but dismayed,” Mr. Issa, California Republican, told The Times, speaking just after he finished a hearing with Inspector General J. Russell George looking at the intrusive IRS scrutiny of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. Read more from this story HERE.

Another Conservative Black Pastor Weighs in on Zimmerman, Calls Jackson and Sharpton ‘Race Hustlers, Poverty Pimps’ and Says Trayvon Martin was a Thug (+video)

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Photo Credit: CNNThe Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, president of the Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny (BOND), a conservative nonprofit, made some contentious statements on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” on Thursday. In addition to lambasting Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson for inserting race into Trayvon Martin’s death and George Zimmerman’s subsequent trial, he called the 17-year-old shooting victim a “thug.”

The exchange began with Peterson claiming that race played no role in the highly-publicized tragedy.

“This case was not about race at all and what happened – you have the race-hustlers and poverty pimps like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and others who turned it into a race issue in order to gain power and wealth,” he charged.

Read more from this story HERE.

Charles Barkley: I Agree with the Zimmerman Verdict (+video)

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During an interview with CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo, NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley made a few surprising comments about the Zimmerman verdict and racism:

Well, I agreed with the verdict. I feel sorry that young kid got killed. But they didn’t have enough evidence to charge him. Something clearly went wrong that night. Clearly something went wrong and I feel bad for anybody who loses a kid, but if you looked at the case and you don’t make it — there was some racial profiling, no question about it. But something happened that changed the dynamic of that night, and I know that’s probably not a popular opinion among most people but just looking at the evidence I agreed with the verdict.

I just feel bad because I don’t like when race gets out in the media because I don’t think the media has a pure heart, as I call it. There are very few people who have a pure heart when it comes to race. Racism is wrong in any, shape, form. There are a lot of black people are racist too. I think sometimes when people talk about racism, they say only white people are racist. There are a lot of black people who are racist. I don’t like when it gets out there in the media because I don’t think the media has clean hands.

Secret Court OKs Continued US Phone Surveillance Program for Another Three Months (+video)

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By Fox News. The secret intelligence court that signs off on giving the U.S. government the authority to monitor hundreds of millions of telephone records has renewed the government’s request to do so for another three months.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced Friday its authority to maintain the program expired on July 19 and that the government had sought and received a renewal from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court.

National Intelligence Director James Clapper announced the new order.

The surveillance program has been under intense scrutiny since June, when former CIA employee and National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked details of two top secret U.S. surveillance programs that critics say violate privacy rights. Read more from this story HERE.

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Secret Court Renews NSA’s Phone Records Collection

By Todd Beamon. The FISA Court in Washington oversees U.S. surveillance programs. It consists of 11 federal judges, all whom have been appointed by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

The White House disclosed the FISA’s stamp of renewed approval of the court order in an effort at greater transparency after former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden leaked details of the National Security Agency’s secret U.S. surveillance programs to the media.

But bipartisan criticism continues to mount on Capitol Hill over the NSA’s collection and stockpiling of millions of Americans’ phone records without individual warrants or suspicions of connections to terrorism.

“By renewing the FISA court order, the Obama administration would reconfirm its support for the dragnet collection of telephone metadata, despite public outcry,” Rep. James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican and a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, told The Guardian newspaper of London.

Meanwhile, Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, said the White House should have let the Verizon order expire. Read more from this story HERE.

Largest Municipal Bankruptcy in History on Hold: Judge Says it’s Illegal (+video)

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Photo Credit: Dale G. YoungBy Gary Heinlein. Ruling the governor and Detroit’s emergency manager violated the state constitution, an Ingham County Circuit judge ordered Friday that Detroit’s federal bankruptcy filing be withdrawn.

“It’s absolutely needed,” said Judge Rosemary Aquilina, observing she hopes Gov. Rick Snyder “reads certain sections of the (Michigan) constitution and reconsiders his actions.”

The judge said state law guards against retirement benefits being “diminished,” but there will be no such protection in federal bankruptcy court.

State-level legal skirmishing over the Chapter 9 bankruptcy effort by Snyder and Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr now will quickly move to the Michigan Court of Appeals. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Fox Confusion in Detroit as judge challenges legality of bankruptcy

By Fox News.The ongoing crisis in Detroit took another — and confusing — turn Friday after an Ingham County judge ruled the city’s historic bankruptcy filing violates the state’s constitution and must be withdrawn.

“I have some very serious concerns because there was this rush to bankruptcy court that didn’t have to occur and shouldn’t have occurred,” Judge Rosemarie Aquilina said Friday in a spate of orders arising from three separate lawsuits.

There was no immediate response from Detroit Emergency Manger Kevyn Orr, who filed the bankruptcy document Thursday, and no indication if city officials planned to take any action in response to Aquilina’s ruling.

Aquilina said Michigan’s constitution prohibits actions that will lessen the pension benefits of public employees, including those in the city of Detroit. She added that Gov. Rick Snyder and Orr overstepped their authority and violated state law by proceeding with the bankruptcy filing because they knew the outcome could affect benefits to thousands of Detroit residents. Read more from this story HERE.

Bombshell Drops in IRS Scandal: Obama’s IRS Chief Counsel Directly Involved (+video)

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesBy Peggy Noonan. The IRS scandal was connected this week not just to the Washington office—that had been established—but to the office of the chief counsel.

That is a bombshell—such a big one that it managed to emerge in spite of an unfocused, frequently off-point congressional hearing in which some members seemed to have accidentally woken up in the middle of a committee room, some seemed unaware of the implications of what their investigators had uncovered, one pretended that the investigation should end if IRS workers couldn’t say the president had personally called and told them to harass his foes, and one seemed to be holding a filibuster on Pakistan.

Still, what landed was a bombshell. And Democrats know it. Which is why they are so desperate to make the investigation go away. They know, as Republicans do, that the chief counsel of the IRS is one of only two Obama political appointees in the entire agency…

Mr. Hull [a retired, 48-year veteran of the IRS] told House investigators that at some point in the winter of 2010-11, Ms. Lerner’s senior adviser, whose name is withheld in the publicly released partial interview transcript, told him the applications would require further review [by the IRS Chief Counsel]…

The IRS chief counsel is named William Wilkins. And again, he is one of only two Obama political appointees in the IRS. Read more from this story HERE.

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IRS Inspector Attacked by Democrats, Claims Liberals’ Treatment of IG is “Unprecedented”

By Fox News. The government watchdog who issued the report that found the IRS was targeting conservative groups was turned into a punching bag by Democrats in the second half of a tense hearing Thursday, leading Inspector General J. Russell George to chide lawmakers for their attacks on his office.

“This is unprecedented,” he said of his treatment before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee at the end of the hearing.

The first half of the hearing was devoted to testimony from IRS officials who claimed higher-ups in Washington, D.C., were involved in applying additional scrutiny to Tea Party and other groups. Read more from this story HERE.

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Rep. Chaffetz Lets Administration Have It Over Misleading Nation on IRS Scandal

“When you have the spokesman for the president of the United States make a definitive statement that it was two rogue agents, and start poking at these people who have no power to do anything about it, that is wrong,” Rep. Chaffetz stated during congressional hearings on the IRS scandal today.

Largest City in History of US Files for Bankruptcy (+video)

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Flashback: Obama boasted in 2012: ‘We refused to let Detroit go bankrupt’

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Photo Credit: J.D. PooleyLargest City in History of US Files for Bankruptcy

By Dominic Rushe. Sinking under huge debts and decades of mismanagement, Detroit formally filed for bankruptcy on Thursday, becoming the biggest US city ever to take such a drastic measure.

Kevyn Orr, Detroit’s emergency manager, took the decision after failing to broker a deal between the city’s bondholders and its pension funds.

The filing sets a new record for municipal bankruptcies and dwarfs the previous record filings by Jefferson County, Alabama, and Stockton, California. No other city of Detroit’s size has ever gone bust.

Orr and the city’s creditors and pensioners will now begin a fraught legal consultation period while a court determines whether the city is eligible for “chapter 9” bankruptcy protection for its $18.5bn debts and liabilities.

In a letter posted with the filing, the Michigan governor Richard Snyder confirmed he had received Orr’s request to start the bankruptcy proceedings. He said it was “clear that the financial emergency in Detroit cannot be successfully addressed outside of such a filing, and it is the only reasonable alternative that is available.”

Here’s the Governor’s explanation:

Read more from this story HERE.

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W.H. says Obama monitoring Detroit bankruptcy

By Reid J. Epstein. President Barack Obama is monitoring Detroit’s municipal bankruptcy, a White House spokeswoman said Thursday, but has not committed any federal help for the beleaguered city.

“The president and members of the president’s senior team continue to closely monitor the situation in Detroit,” spokeswoman Amy Brundage said Thursday. “While leaders on the ground in Michigan and the city’s creditors understand that they must find a solution to Detroit’s serious financial challenge, we remain committed to continuing our strong partnership with Detroit as it works to recover and revitalize and maintain its status as one of America’s great cities.”

The tepid reaction Thursday comes after saving the Detroit auto industry was a central feature of Obama’s re-election campaign – when Democrats savaged Republican Mitt Romney for a New York Times op-ed headlined “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” Read more from this story HERE.

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Related: Municipality Selling Off Museum Artifacts to Reduce Crushing Debt

By Rick Leventhal, Kathleen Foster. An East Coast city that’s been sitting on a Wild West gold mine is finally cashing in on the loot.

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s state capital, is auctioning off thousands of antique artifacts this week, hoping the sale will help pull the city out of debt.

Back in 1980, the citizens of Harrisburg elected Stephen Reed as mayor. He envisioned the city as a tourist destination, filled with museums, including one showcasing Harrisburg’s one-time claim to fame as the gateway to the West. He spent more than $8 million on roughly 10,000 pieces, including antique guns, old horse-drawn wagons, “Wyatt Earp’s Days of the Week Shaving Set,” Jesse James and Billy The Kid wanted posters and sheriff’s badges. The city built one museum, but went broke before it could build three more, as the mayor intended.

“He went about it in ways that were not exactly according to rules,” said Arlen Ettinger, President of Guernsey’s, the New York City-based auction house the city hired to sell the items.

“He took city monies to acquire things that he thought would look well in museums, and he was a great fan of the old West.” Read more from this story HERE.