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Lawmakers Blast Guantanamo’s $2.7 Million Per Prisoner Cost

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Photo Credit: JTF GitmoDemocratic lawmakers pushing to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay said on Wednesday its cost has skyrocketed to $2.7 million per inmate this year and argued it is too expensive to keep open while the country is fighting budget deficits.

“This is a massive waste of money,” Senator Dianne Feinstein said during a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the base.

Guantanamo has been dubbed the most expensive prison on Earth, and President Barack Obama in May cited its cost – then calculated at about $900,000 per prisoner – as one of many reasons to close it.

Representative Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, testified during the hearing that the current cost of operating the facility has jumped to $454 million in the fiscal year ended September 30, according to the U.S. Department of Defense, or about $2.7 million for each of the 166 inmates.

Smith said overall, $4.7 billion has been spent running Guantanamo since the facility opened in 2002. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: GettyGuantanamo Bay Prison Divides Senate Panel

By Alexei Koseff. Sharp disagreement over the future of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp dominated the first Senate hearing on the issue in four years.

The meeting Wednesday of a Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee, held in the wake of a high-profile hunger strike by inmates and renewed calls from President Obama to close the facility, made clear that deep partisan divisions remain over whether keeping the prison open is a threat to national security or a necessity.

Opened at a U.S. Navy base in Cuba in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, Guantanamo was established by President George W. Bush to hold detainees suspected of connections to global terrorism organizations.

Allegations of abuse and torture of inmates have led to repeated calls for Guantanamo’s closure, and Obama has campaigned twice on the issue, though Congress has passed repeated measures to keep the prison open.

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), who is chairman of the panel, urged Congress to support Obama’s efforts, which would end the indefinite detention of prisoners without trial and either release them or charge them in American courts. Read more from this story HERE.

Charles Krauthammer Takes On Sally Kohn: Detroit is Not A GOP Failure, ‘It’s Been Run by The Democrats for 60 Years’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTubeBy Jason Howerton. Charles Krauthammer hit back at liberal pundit Sally Kohn after she claimed conservatives will “try to use Detroit falsely as an example to push more austerity.” Kohn’s comments fall in line with those of a number of liberal and progressive commentators who are seemingly attempting to pin Detroit’s collapse on GOP policies, despite the fact that the city has been run by Democrats and progressives for decades.

That’s the point that Krauthammer hammered home.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: ReutersDetroit bankruptcy raises concerns about other US cites under huge retiree debt

By Fox News. The recent bankruptcy filing in Detroit is raising red flags about other major U.S. cities also dealing with billions in under-funded retiree benefits, prompting the question — who might be next?

Just last week, Chicago’s credit rating was downgraded as a result of its $19 billion in under-funded pension liabilities.

Moody’s Investors Service called the liabilities “very large and growing” and warned that Chicago, the country’s third-largest city, faces a “tremendous strain’’ in trying to meet future funding requirements and public safety demands.

A similar scenario, though decades in the making, largely doomed Detroit, whose average police response time has grown to more than 50 minutes.

And like Michigan, which appears in no position to bail out Detroit, Illinois is dealing with its own $97 billion pension shortfall. Read more from this story HERE.

Democrats Pin Their Hopes for Obama’s Amnesty Bill on Rep. Paul Ryan

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Photo Credit: Gage SkidmoreDemocrats doggedly pursuing a far-reaching immigration bill are counting on help from Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s running mate last year and an unlikely candidate for delivering the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s second-term agenda.

Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman who is frequently mentioned in the GOP lineup of possible 2016 presidential candidates, stands apart from many fellow House Republicans in favoring a way out of the shadows for the 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. in violation of the law.

He casts sweeping overhaul as a necessity to ensure both economic and national security — a fitting argument for an acolyte of Jack Kemp, the late Republican congressman and 1996 vice presidential candidate who backed an ill-fated effort in 2006 to overhaul the immigration system.

‘‘Paul Ryan says we cannot have a permanent underclass of Americans, that there needs to be a pathway to citizenship,’’ says Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., who has been working relentlessly on immigration legislation. ‘‘He is my guiding light. I know I get him in trouble every time I say it.’’

Senior White House aides often mention the Wisconsin Republican as crucial to the prospects for legislation this year, hoping the Republican with impeccable conservative credentials will sway recalcitrant House members. Ryan also is a reminder of two other powerful forces backing an overhaul of immigration laws — the Catholic Church and business.

Read more from this story HERE.

Gang of 8 Senators Join With Multinational Corporations to Target Tea Party House Members Opposing Amnesty

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Photo Credit: APBy John Bresnahan, Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer. Big Business, Senate Republicans and Democrats backing immigration reform have a target in their crosshairs: House Republicans.

Senators like John McCain (R-Ariz), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) met with tech giants such as Microsoft, Google and Intel, and pro reform groups like FWD.us to discuss a coordinated campaign to target more than 100 House Republicans on reforming the nation’s immigration laws when they are at home in their districts over the next month, according to sources familiar with the meeting.

Graham suggested getting people to target Republicans at town hall meetings. Schumer said he wanted pastors giving sermons about the need for immigration reform.

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), his former House colleague, should bring a negotiated immigration compromise to the floor even if it doesn’t have the support of the majority of Republicans, according to sources present.

McCain urged the group to push for the Senate bill by discussing its component parts — but not mentioning the overall bill. Read more from this story HERE.

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Amnesty Bill Will Put Citizens in Direct Competition With Illegal Aliens for Student Loans, Other Federal Benefits

By Aaron Klein. American citizens may soon find themselves competing with illegal aliens to secure government student loans and federal work-study assistance.

A WND review of the Senate’s immigration reform bill finds the legislation allows illegal aliens who are granted provisional status and who initially entered the United States before reaching 16 years of age to secure both federal student loans and federal work-study programs.

The provisional citizens would still need to meet the academic requirements necessary to obtain the aid.

The discovery is contrary to claims by proponents of the immigration reform bill who have repeatedly insisted the newly legalized residents will not be eligible for public funds.

The student financial assistance is not the only public benefits allowable under the legislation. Read more from this story HERE.

There Are No Indispensable Men

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Photo Credit: SenRockefellerThere are no indispensable men, but go to Washington and everyone treats everyone else as indispensable.

Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have been in the United States Congress since 1985. In that time the national debt has grown from $1,823,103,000,000.00 to $16,066,241,407,385.89. In that time the GOP went from being the part of small government to the party of slightly smaller than the Democrats. No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D, TARP, the General Motors bailout, and so much more happened on their watch.

But they remain and voters who vote party and not person keep supporting them. But they are not indispensable. No man is indispensable. The longer one stays in Washington though, the more desperate one becomes to stay in Washington. They collaborate in a system of arrangements whereby they get more power and more influence. Their staff leaves to K Street creating a feedback loop. They and their Democratic counterparts reward friends and steer policy not toward ideas and ideology, but toward power with themselves in the center of it.

No man is indispensable. Mike Enzi (R-WY) is right there with them.

Mike Enzi is a fine Republican, but he is not putting points on the board for conservatives. We need more like Ted Cruz and less like . . . well . . . Mike Enzi. We need less rudderless Republicans who shuffle around at the direction of their leadership and lobbyist friends.

Read more from this story HERE.

Texas Democrats Vow Legal Challenge Against Recently-Passed Abortion Restrictions (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsTexas Democrats vowed to fight one of the most restrictive abortion bills in the nation passed by the state legislature late Friday in front of more than 2,000 protesters.

“There will be a lawsuit. I promise you,” Dallas Sen. Royce West said on the Senate floor, raising his right hand as if taking an oath.

Democrats offered 20 amendments to the bill, which will ban abortions after 20 weeks, require abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital and require all abortions to take place in surgical centers. They ranged from exceptions for rape and incest to allowing doctors more leeway in prescribing abortion-inducing drugs. But Republicans would have none of it.

The Republican majority passed the bill unchanged just before midnight with all but one Democrat voting against it.

The bill has sparked protests across Texas with thousands of abortion rights supporters flooding the Capitol to draw out committee hearings and disrupting key votes. Protesters finished a filibuster started by Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis of Fort Worth by jeering for the last 15 minutes of the first special session, effectively killing the bill.

Read more from this story HERE.

Of Democratic Rats and Sinking Ships

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Photo Credit: David C. FosterAccording to legend, seafaring rats may possess an almost supernatural psychic ability to predict the future or to interpret natural lore such that they would have foreknowledge of the doom of the ship. They would leave, swim away, and take their chances in the open water rather than going down with the ship.

Absent scientific data to confirm the legend, the metaphor “like rats leaving a sinking ship” seems to have taken on a life of its own that may be used to describe certain committed leftists who have interpreted the proverbial tealeaves or seen the “handwriting on the wall” regarding the Affordable Health Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare.

To wit: Montana Senator Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and one of the architects of Obamacare, expressed his sense of hopelessness concerning the financial implementation of Obamacare in a harangue directed at Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius in which he characterized the (not so) Affordable Healthcare Act as a “huge train wreck.”

On April 23 the former chairman of the miscarried super-committee announced that he is bowing out of politics and will not seek re-election in 2014. That’s one Democrat rat that has abandoned the Obamacare ship.

After suffering immense political damage from her “What difference does it make?” remark regarding the cause of the tragic deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the author of failed 1990s “Hillarycare,” once more abandoned public life. Some have suggested it was former presidential candidate Clinton who coined the word Obamacare.” For whatever reasons, the once Obamacare sycophant has fallen silent from shilling for the Affordable Healthcare Act. That is two metaphorical Democratic rats off the sinking ship of state.

Read more from this story HERE.

Murkowski Votes With Democrats to Advance Bill Forcing Private Employers in 33 States to Hire Homosexual Applicants (ENDA)

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By Daniel Strauss. A Senate panel approved legislation Wednesday in a bipartisan 15-7 vote that would outlaw discrimination in the workplace based on an employee’s gender identity or sexual orientation.

Three Republicans joined 12 Democrats on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in approving the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).

The GOP votes came from Sens. Orrin Hatch (Utah), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), and Mark Kirk (Ill.). Hatch voted aye by proxy.

The legislation would outlaw any kind of discrimination based on sexual orientation including both hiring and firing and other employment related matters like salaries and terms of employment.

Federal law currently outlaws employment discrimination centered on age, disability, national origin, race, religion or sex but not gender identity or sexual orientation. ENDA aims to fill the hole in states in the 33 states where there is no separate law against discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. Read more from this story HERE.

[Editor’s note: Murkowski reported to the pro-homosexual publication Metro Weekly that “When I was home over the break, I think it was 1,174 postcards were delivered to my office from Alaskans from around the state in support of ENDA. If you listen to your folks back home this is important to them.”]
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The Alaska Family Council Recommends You Watch this Documentary on the Left’s International LGBT Agenda

A new documentary entitled Cultural Imperialism examines the Obama Administration’s efforts to impose its LGBT values on many third world countries, particularly African nations. And they are pushing back:

Sen. Mike Lee: Defund Obamacare or Shut Down the Government

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Photo Credit: APSen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, thinks President Obama’s delay of key provisions of Obamacare could force Senate Democrats to defend the unpopular law during the upcoming congressional debate on a new continuing resolution to fund the government through the 2014 election.

“If congressional Democrats want to oppose appropriations bills without additional Obamacare funding, shut down the government, and side with the president and Big Business against the American people, then it’s their choice,” Lee said.

“But three years in, even the president himself has now admitted that Obamacare won’t work. The only responsible choice now is to protect the country from Obamacare’s looming disaster, start over and finally begin work on real health care reform.”

Lee is responding to the Treasury Department’s July 5th announcement that it will delay implementation of Obamacare’s employer mandate on businesses to provide health insurance to workers.

The new CR would be the fourth such stop-gap funding measure since Congress failed to adopt an annual budget in 2010. The government is currently operating on a CR that expires Sept. 30.

Read more from this story HERE.

Governor of Last State Without Concealed Carry Vetoes Bill

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Illinois Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn triggered a backlash from his own party as well as the NRA on Tuesday after he unilaterally changed legislation meant to allow the carrying of concealed weapons.

In a challenge to gun-rights supporters, Quinn moved to cap the number of firearms and rounds that can be carried by Illinois residents and ban guns from any place that serves alcohol.

The move was a nod to the governor’s gun-control base as the state faces a court-ordered July 9 deadline to allow concealed-carry.

But, by using what is known as his “amendatory veto power,” Quinn could imperil the carefully crafted deal, which now heads back to the legislature.

Some lawmakers have already vowed to reject Quinn’s new provisions.

Read more from this story HERE.