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Holder Begins Gun-Control Push

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photo credit: usdagovThe Justice Department is taking the first steps toward carrying out President Obama’s executive actions on gun control.

Attorney General Eric Holder on Friday released three proposals to strengthen the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which was one of the 23 actions ordered by Obama last week to tackle gun violence.

The proposed regulations would give local law-enforcement agencies access to the gun-sale database that is maintained by the FBI. The rules would also preserve records of denied weapons sales indefinitely.

The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act already requires federal background checks for gun purchases, but not every firearm sale is covered under the law.

Currently, law enforcement agencies cannot perform a NICS check when transferring, returning or selling weapons that have been confiscated, seized or recovered. The new rules would change that, allowing officials to perform a background check on people who receive those weapons to ensure that they are permitted to own a gun.

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Social Security’s Disability Trust Fund Could Fail to Cover All Benefits Early as 2016

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photo credit: donkeyhoteyAs President Obama faces pressure on the left to defend federal entitlement programs from the benefit cuts that the Republicans say are necessary to keep the programs solvent decades down the road, one part of Social Security could fall short of paying out full benefits within a few years — even while Obama is still president.

Over the long term, Social Security and Medicare have promised tens of trillions of dollars more in benefits than the nation can pay for under current policies. But Social Security’s disability trust fund is in even worse shape, and current estimates say by 2016 it won’t have enough money to pay full benefits.

“That’s three years from now,” Jim Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center said. “And given the president’s rhetoric and his posture, it’s quite clear that he has no intention of doing anything about it.”

The fiscal security of the disability trust fund got rapidly worse as the unemployment rate rose. The number of applications has almost doubled in the last 10 years, from 1.5 million a year in 2001 to more than 2.8 million a year in 2012.

Obama has said little about how he would fix the fund’s finances.

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Buchanan: Obama Has Hijacked the American Revolution

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photo credit: victorynh

“Second Term Begins With a Sweeping Agenda for Equality,” ran the eight-column banner in which the Washington Post captured the essence of Obama’s second inaugural. There he declared:

“What binds this nation together … what makes us exceptional – what makes us American – is our allegiance to an idea, articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago.”

Obama then quoted our Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Our “union,” Obama went on, was “founded on the principles of liberty and equality.”

Nice prose – and transparent nonsense.

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White House Fly Upstages President’s Press Conference

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The buzzing insect stole the show as the President announced two new members of his second administration, cutting wild loops around the leader of the free world before landing squarely on his forehead.

The official White House transcript simply reads: “This guy is bothering me here – (swatting at a fly.)”

Meanwhile, the pool report which describes the President’s movements throughout the day noted that “the president spoke for about five minutes while being menaced by a house fly”.

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Obama Wants 100,000 American Students to Study in Communist China

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(CNSNews.com) – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday will celebrate the launch of a newly rebranded organization called the “100,000 Strong Foundation,” which aims to have 100,000 American students studying in China by 2014.

Thursday’s event will “underscore the importance of study abroad in China and the benefits to our strategic relationship with China as well as the personal benefits individuals receive through these exciting experiences,” the news release said.

Until now, the 100,000 Strong Initiative — announced by President Obama on his trip to China in 2009 — has operated inside the State Department. Thursday’s 1 p.m. ceremony marks its transition to a non-profit, nongovernmental organization operating independently.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton officially launched the Obama initiative in May 2010 in Beijing. “China has established dozens of Confucius Institutes across the United States that offer Chinese language instruction and cultural programs to help Americans better understand China,” Clinton said at the time. “We would like to see similar American language and culture centers on the campuses of Chinese universities.”

According to State Department statistics, in the 2010/11 academic year, 14,596 U.S. students were studying in China, which was number five on the list of study-abroad destinations, behind the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and France.

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Lou Holtz After Obama’s Inauguration: ‘I’m Done, Finished, the Country’s Over With, We’re Not Doing This Again!’

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Former Notre Dame coach and ESPN commentator Lou Holtz has spent decades giving individuals pep talks, both on and off the football field. But the re-election of President Barack Obama caused the legendary coach to seek out someone else for inspiration: Speaker of the House John Boehner.

During an address to the Ripon Society on Tuesday, Boehner revealed that Holtz consulted him via text messages on Monday night following Obama’s inauguration.

“Last night, I got a three-page text from my good friend Lou Holtz, who must have watched the inaugural and then all that blabber on TV…: ‘I’m done, finished, the country’s over with — we’re not doing this again!,’” Boehner recounted.

The text was not the first time Holtz voiced pessimism about the president.

“Now, I had already had this conversation with Lou about nine or ten days after the election. He came in to speak to our 34 new members. And before he went over to talk to them, he came over to my office, and he was moaning and groaning,” Boehner said. “I said, ‘Lou, would you stop it? We’re Americans, we’ll figure this out!’ And I had to spend 15 minutes giving Lou Holtz a pep talk! I had to do it again last night!”

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Colin Powell Invited to See Obama Fraud Evidence

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Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has denounced Republicans for “birther nonsense” and described such concerns as “idiot presentations,” but now a law enforcement official who has reviewed the evidence regarding Barack Obama’s eligibility has invited Powell to see it for himself.

“I don’t know what Mr. Powell’s problem is,” said Michael Zullo, the lead investigator of the Cold Case Posse for Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz.

“I would open an invitation to him at my expense to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, and I will sit down with him and show him the evidence that we have accumulated that brings us to the only logical conclusion – that this document (Obama’s birth certificate) is manufactured.”

Zullo argued that “if it’s manufactured, the president of the United States at that point in time owes the American people at explanation.

“Tell us why. … It’s as simple as that.”

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Democrats Assault on Second Amendment Begins

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WASHINGTON — California Democrat Dianne Feinstein begins her fourth full term as a U.S. senator much as she started her Senate career: fighting for a ban on assault weapons.

Feinstein’s new bill introduced Thursday proposes to:

•Ban the sale, transfer, importation or manufacturing of about 150 named firearms, plus certain rifles, handguns and shotguns fitted for detachable magazines and having at least one military characteristic.
•Strengthen the 1994 ban by moving from a two- to a one-characteristic test to determine what constitutes an assault weapon.
•Ban firearms with “thumbhole stocks” and “bullet buttons.”
•Ban the importation of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines.
•Ban high-capacity ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.

The bill would grandfather in weapons legally owned on the day of enactment and exempts over 900 specific weapons “used for hunting or sporting purposes.”

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‘Communist Revolutionary’ Van Jones: Inaugural Address Proves Obama’s a ‘Communitarian’ (+audio)

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After President Obama’s second inaugural address, Van Jones, former Obama White House “green jobs” czar, praised the speech, calling it “Djobama Unchained” (after the controversial movie Django Unchained, about a freed slave taking revenge). On Wednesday night, during a lecture at Loyola University Chicago, I asked Jones what he meant. He explained that while President Obama is not a socialist, he is, in fact, a “communitarian.”

After a long recapping of the first four years of the Obama’s presidency, Jones elaborated: “It’s very interesting to see him now, actually, free.

Watching this man for four years, for everything he’s done to try to reach out to the other side, and frankly neglect his base, has just been called socialism, and just been called divisive, no matter what he does.

I was happy to see him unleashed and unchained and just be able to speak from his heart.

And what he said was, similar to what I’ve been saying, there is a “New Patriotism.”

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Muslim Brotherhood Group to ‘Connect All U.S. Schools’

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JERUSALEM – A Muslim Brotherhood-linked organization has partnered with the U.S. Department of Education and the State Department to facilitate an online program aiming to connect all U.S. schools with classrooms abroad by 2016.

Vartan Gregorian, a board member of the organization, the Qatar Foundation International, was appointed in 2009 to President Obama’s White House Fellowships Commission.

WND previously exposed that Gregorian served as a point man in granting $49.2 million in startup capital to an education-reform project founded by former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers and chaired by Obama.

Documentation shows Gregorian was central in Ayers’ recruitment of Obama to serve as the first chairman of the project, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge – a job in which Obama worked closely on a regular basis with Ayers.

Obama also later said his job at the project qualified him to run for public office, as WND previously reported.

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