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Boston Community Cancels Veteran’s Day Parade Because of Lack of Veterans (+video)

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Photo Credit: mrsdkrebsThis Sunday, the streets of Beverly will look just like they always do. And that’s the problem, some veterans say. The city has cancelled its annual Memorial Day parade for what’s believed to be the first time since the end of the Civil War.

Many veterans who were gathered at the Herman A. Spear American Legion Post on Friday night are upset by the decision.

“It’s not right to me,” says Ron Innocenti. He is a Vietnam veteran who has not only marched in the city’s Memorial Day parade in the past, he says he has also been its grand marshal.

He hates to cancel because of the message it sends to men and women serving now.

“It’s a slap in the face to them that we’re not doing it,” he says. “But on the other hand, I can see why we’re not doing it because of the age of the veterans we have now.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Over 500 Pounds of Explosives Stolen from Montana Federal Storage Facility

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Photo Credit: APAround the same time the nation was transfixed on the hunt for the Boston Marathon bombers last month, thieves on the other side of the country pulled off a little-noticed heist — swiping 559 pounds of explosives from a federal storage facility in Montana.

As of Friday, not one ounce of it has been found.

The incident, federal officials believe, was not terrorism-related. But it’s the latest to raise security concerns in an age when authorities are warning about the desire of violence-bent terrorists to inflict mass casualties with bombs.

Rep. Steve Daines, Montana’s only congressman, told FoxNews.com he’s “deeply concerned” about the theft in his state and will be “closely monitoring” the investigation.

The explosives were stolen from a locked U.S. Forest Service bunker near Billings. Thieves took off with various emulsion-type explosives, cast boosters and detonating cord.

Read more from this story HERE.

Cardinal Boycotting Boston College Commencement to Protest Irish Prime Minister’s Support for Abortion

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Photo Credit: Barry ChinCardinal Sean P. O’Malley, the archbishop of the Boston Archdiocese, said today he would not attend Boston College’s commencement because the scheduled speaker, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, supports controversial abortion-rights legislation in his country.

In a statement released this afternoon, O’Malley said the Catholic Bishops of the United States have urged Catholic institutions not to honor government officials whose views on the issue are inconsistent with the teachings of the Catholic church.

The Irish legislation would permit abortions if there is a real and substantial threat to the mother’s life, including from suicide.

“Since the university has not withdrawn the invitation and because the Taoiseach [prime minister] has not seen fit to decline, I shall not attend the graduation,’’ O’Malley said in a statement. “It is my ardent hope that Boston College will work to redress the confusion, disappointment and harm caused by not adhering to the Bishops’ directives.’’

He added, “although I shall not be present to impart the final benediction, I assure the graduates that they are in my prayers on this important day in their lives, and I pray that their studies will prepare them to be heralds of the Church’s Social Gospel and ‘men and women for others,’ especially for the most vulnerable in our midst.’’

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Mystery Plane Flying Over Metropolitan Boston; Is it Sampling for WMD’s?

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Photo Credit: nickstone333A mystery in Quincy continues to deepen: Who is flying around the city from dusk to dawn, for the past ten days or so?

“It’s frightening, not just weird, but frightening,” said one resident of the Wollaston section.

Every night for nearly the last two weeks, residents have spotted a low-flying aircraft doing loops over the city. WBZ has learned the FAA knows what’s going on, but the agency isn’t telling.

“I mean it is strange. I don’t know if they’re looking for somebody, I have no idea,” one resident told WBZ.

It’s not the state or local police doing the flying, and the FAA is giving out little information, even to city officials.

Read more from this story HERE.

Bill Maher Slams Boston Police

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Photo Credit: APBill Maher called Boston police officers “unprofessional” on Friday for shooting at the boat where Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was hiding even though it turned out he was unarmed.

“I agree that we shouldn’t have given the kid his Miranda rights because he probably had information. We wanted to take him alive. We all agree with that.… there could’ve been bombs out there, there could’ve been an accomplice. So we wanted to take him alive. If you agree with that then what the cops did there was unprofessional. That’s called contagious fire,” Maher said on HBO’s “Real Time.”

According to reports, no gun was found inside the boat after Tsarnaev was captured, although the Boston Police commissioner had earlier said that cops had exchanged fire with the suspect.

Read more from this story HERE.

GOP Senators Say Constitution Doesn't Apply to Bombing Suspect

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Photo Credit: Vjeran Pavic

By Jeremy Herb and Mike Lillis. Two powerful GOP senators are calling on the Obama administration to treat the captured suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings as an “enemy combatant” and deny him counsel even though he is reportedly an American citizen.

Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, captured Friday night outside Boston after a tense daylong manhunt, should be questioned for intelligence purposes and not read his Miranda rights.

“It is clear the events we have seen over the past few days in Boston were an attempt to kill American citizens and terrorize a major American city,” McCain and Graham said late Friday in a joint statement. “The accused perpetrators of these acts were not common criminals attempting to profit from a criminal enterprise, but terrorist trying to injure, maim, and kill innocent Americans.”

With Tsarnaev in custody, the lawmakers said, “the last thing we should want is for him to remain silent.”

“We need to know about any possible future attacks which could take additional American lives,” they said. “The least of our worries is a criminal trial which will likely be held years from now.” Read more from this story HERE.

ACLU calls for Miranda rights for Boston bombing suspect

By Mike Lillis. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is calling for the Obama administration to read the suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings his legal rights.

The Department of Justice indicated Friday that the administration would not read 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda rights, citing a public safety exception.

But Anthony Romero, the ACLU’s executive director, said Saturday that the immediate threat is over and that Tsarnaev, an ethnic Chechen who became a naturalized U.S. citizen last year, should now be treated like any other suspected criminal.

“Every criminal defendant is entitled to be read Miranda rights,” Romero said in a statement. “The public safety exception should be read narrowly. It applies only when there is a continued threat to public safety and is not an open-ended exception to the Miranda rule.”

Tsarnaev was captured Friday night in the Boston suburb of Watertown after leading law enforcers on a tense, day-long manhunt that captured the attention of the nation and locked down much of Greater Boston. Read more from this story HERE.

Police Chief: Surviving Boston Bombing Brother Ran Over, Killed Older Brother

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Photo Credit: AP

Watertown police chief Edward Deveau said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old suspected Boston Marathon bomber who was captured alive on Friday, killed his older brother Tamerlan by driving over him and dragging his body through the street with a carjacked SUV Thursday night.

Deveau, in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Saturday, said police officers were handcuffing Tamerlan, who had run out of ammunition, when Dzhokhar came at them in a carjacked SUV. Watertown officers were able to get out of the way.
The brothers were armed with pipe bombs, firearms, and explosives and had been in a firefight with officers on Thursday night after they reportedly “assassinated” an MIT police officer. Deveau said a pressure cooker bomb also went off during the firefight, causing a major explosion. The brothers threw explosives at the officers.

Dzhokhar eventually abandoned the SUV, fleeing on foot. He hid in a land-docked boat in a Watertown neighborhood, where law enforcement found him Friday evening.

Read more from this story HERE.

Boston Bombs: Obama Lulled America Into False Confidence Over Terror Threat

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Photo Credit: transplanted mountaineer

In his State of the Union address to the American people earlier this year, Barack Obama declared that he was “confident” of achieving “our objective of defeating the core of al-Qaeda”.

Although he acknowledged the need to pursue the “remnants” of the terrorist group and its affiliates, the overall message was clear – al-Qaeda was badly degraded, the tides of war were receding and the US was winning this fight that was no longer even officially a war.

The Boston bombings would appear to present a fundamental challenge to that assessment and once again bring the nagging uncertainty of terrorism back on to the American main street.

It is too soon to be absolutely sure the attacks were motivated by jihadist ideology, but the Islamic videos on the website of the older of the two Tsarnaev brothers point very firmly in that direction.

They bring home the complexity of the global Islamist threat and the fact that it cannot be confined to wars in distant lands, or fought at arm’s length using drones, as the Obama administration has quietly yet insistently led America to believe.

Watch video here:

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Obama on Bomb Suspect Arrest: Don't 'Rush' to Judge 'Entire Groups of People'

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Photo Credit: Getty

Following Friday’s capture of 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, President Obama warned against rushing to judgment about “entire groups of people,” the Associated Press reported.

“In this age of instant reporting, tweets, and blogs, there’s a temptations to latch on to any bit of information sometimes to jump to conclusions. When a tragedy like this happens, with public safety at risk and the stakes so high, it’s important that we do this right. That’s why we have investigations. That’s why we relentlessly gather the facts, that’s why we have courts. That’s why we take care not to rush to judgement, not about the motivations of these individuals and certainly not about entire groups of people,” he said.

“Translation: don’t look behind the curtain at the Islamic radical connection,” said a post at Weasel Zippers.

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Home-Grown Terrorist Attack Threatens to Disrupt Obama Agenda

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The Boston Marathon terrorist attack allegedly hatched by two brothers from Chechnya is threatening to disrupt President Obama’s second-term agenda.

Opponents of immigration reform — the most promising priority of Obama’s second term remaining after the defeat of gun control — are already using the attack to try to slow progress on a bipartisan Senate bill.

More broadly, the attack is raising questions about how the administration should deal with 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was captured Friday after an exhaustive manhunt in Boston, and concerns over whether the FBI was too complacent in letting his older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev out of its sight after interviewing him in 2011.

The issues are expected to create political problems and distractions for Obama, whose fight against terrorism has largely been a political success highlighted by the killing of Osama bin Laden.

It is unclear how much oxygen the issue will consume in the coming weeks, but it seems certain it will shift the political debates in Washington.

Read more from this story HERE.