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Republicans Denounce NYC Terror Trial For Bin Laden Son-In-Law

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Photo Credit: APRepublicans are denouncing the Obama administration’s decision to bring Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law to New York for a civilian trial, arguing he belongs in military custody in Guantanamo Bay.

Slaiman Abu Ghayth pleaded not guilty to a charge of conspiring to kill Americans Friday in a brief appearance in New York federal courtroom. The presence of bin Laden’s son-in-law, who serves as a spokesman for al Qaeda, in New York City just blocks from where the World Trade Center towers were demolished — is reigniting a fiery debate over whether terrorists should be tried in civilian court or military commissions.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said the decision to try Mr. Ghayth in New York demonstrates “a stubborn refusal” to hold additional terrorists at the Guantanamo Bay facility and could impede intelligence collection.

The intelligence team that located Osama bin Laden, Mr. McConnell said, relied on information gathered through the interrogation of detainees. Right now, the nation’s intelligence community is trying to locate al Qaeda’s new leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and do everything they can to disrupt potential terrorist attacks.

Citing public records, Mr. McConnell also said Mr. Ghayth possesses “valuable knowledge of al Qaeda’s activities within Iran.” “Our intelligence community and military are laboring to understand the structure, threat and communications methods of al Qaeda affiliates in Yemen, North Africa and the growing threat of Al Nusra front within Syria,” he said. “They deserve the same access to intelligence and methods of defeating the enemy available to the team that found bin Laden.”

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Coburn Offers FAA Easy Alternatives To Closing Towers, Cutting Air Traffic Controllers

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Photo Credit: Daily CallerIn the latest installment of Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn’s letter-writing campaign for administration sanity in implementing the sequester, the Republican is taking on the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) spending cut priorities.

In a letter to Department of Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood, Coburn called on the FAA to cancel upcoming conferences, stop nonessential hiring or reform low-priority programs before cutting elements that could harm flight safety.

“The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced today that it will close 173 air traffic control towers, effective April 7, and could furlough nearly 47,000 employees, ‘including all management and non-management employees working within the Air Traffic Organization,’” Coburn wrote in the letter, dispatched Wednesday. “All of the 173 towers closing April 7 are privately run under contracts. The department’s inspector general, however, reported that these same contract towers are both cheaper and safer than towers operated by the FAA.”

Under sequestration, the FAA is expected to cut $600 million — or just 4 percent of the agency’s nearly $16 billion budget for fiscal year 2012.

According Coburn, if a reduction in conference expenditures can stop “even one day of furlough for one air traffic controller,” then the FAA should be moving forward with it.

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Obamacare Requirements Will Drive Up Premiums

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Photo Credit: Washington Examiner In 2007, candidate Barack Obama declared, “I will sign a universal health care bill into law by the end of my first term as president that will cover every American and cut the cost of a typical family’s premium by up to $2,500 a year.” As president, he signed national health care legislation that is formally known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare. But according to a new report from Congressional Republicans, the law will actually cause premiums to more than double for some Americans.

The report, which is based on a compilation of independent studies on the effect of the law’s new regulations, finds that Obamacare could increase premiums by 40 percent on average and by as much as 202 percent for young adults living in Chicago.

There are several ways the health care law puts upward pressure on premiums. It requires insurers to offer coverage to everybody who applies, regardless of pre-existing conditions. It limits the amount that companies can adjust prices based on health status. It also requires that every American purchase a health insurance policy that meets federal specifications regarding the level of benefits covered. In addition, the law imposes $165 billion of tax increases on health insurance, drug manufacturers and medical device-makers. These policies work together to drive up the cost of insurance, especially on younger and healthier Americans.

It’s true that the law also offers subsidies to individuals to purchase insurance. But those subsidies are phased out for individuals earning more than $46,000. The report anticipates, “Even after receiving subsidies, Americans earning as little as $25,000 will still pay more.”

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Arkansas Adopts US’s Most Restrictive Abortion Law

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Photo Credit: Helga WeberArkansas soon will have the nation’s most restrictive abortion law – a near-ban on the procedure from the 12th week of pregnancy onward – unless a lawsuit or court action intervenes.

Lawmakers in the Republican-dominated Legislature defied Gov. Mike Beebe, overriding the Democrat’s veto. The House voted 56-33 on Wednesday to override Beebe’s veto, a day after the Senate voted to do the same.

The votes come less than a week after the Legislature overrode a veto of a separate bill banning most abortions starting in the 20th week of pregnancy. That bill took effect immediately after the final override vote, whereas the 12-week ban won’t take effect until this summer.

Abortion rights proponents already have said they’ll sue to block the 12-week ban from taking effect. Beebe warned lawmakers that both measures would end up wasting taxpayers’ money with the state defending them in court, where, he said, they are likely to fail.

The measures’ supporters, who expected court challenges, were undaunted. “Not the governor, nor anyone else other than the courts, can determine if something is constitutional or unconstitutional,” Rep. Bruce Westerman, a Republican from Hot Springs, said in urging his colleagues to override Beebe.

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Divisions Among Republicans Stalling Formation Of Benghazi Select Committee

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Photo Credit: BretbartTop Republicans with classified information about the terrorist assault on the U.S. mission in Benghazi last September may not want to see a House Select Committee formed to investigate the attack that left four Americans dead, including U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens, although a number of Senate and House Republicans remain unsatisfied with information they have received from the Obama administration about the deadly attack. Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA), a subcommittee chairman on the House Appropriations Committee, has re -filed a resolution to form such a select committee. Only Speaker John Boehner can allow the formation of a House Select Committee.

Other Republicans were unsure of their support for a select committee. “You know, I don’t think so. We’re still under the review of our committee right now, so we’re still conducting our investigation. We haven’t finished it yet. I’m not exactly sure where the foreign affairs committee is yet, but I know they are still doing their review,” said Congressman Mike Rogers (R-MI), Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, when Breitbart News asked if he would support Wolf’s effort.

“And then there is a DoD review, so I’m not so sure we’ve exhausted all of our ability to get the information that we need for a select committee. They’re very expensive,” he added.

Wolf sent a “dear colleague letter” to Republican House members on Friday asking for their support for his resolution. Wolf expressed the necessity for the select committee so that Benghazi survivors could have a venue to put forth their accounts without risking their jobs or face prosecution from the Justice Department.

Boehner and Rogers are both part of Congress’ “super 8,” both parties’ top leadership in the upper and lower chambers. They, as well as chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, are all privy to classified information about the Benghazi attack.

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Rush: The Real Reason Republicans Lose (+audio)

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Photo Credit: WND Radio host Rush Limbaugh says there’s a relatively simple reason why Republicans have not been able to win the presidency in the last two election cycles: they don’t have conservative candidates at the top of the ticket.

“That’s why we’re losing, because we keep nominating moderates,” Limbaugh claimed Tuesday on his top-rated national talk show.

He referred to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee for the White House, as “one of the most decent men ever to run for the presidency in my lifetime and probably in many people’s lifetimes.”

“A totally decent guy,” he continued, “but four million Republicans didn’t vote in 2012.

Listen to audio:

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Video: Sperling Says GOP Will Cave On Taxes After Seeing ‘Pain’ Caused By Sequester

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Photo Credit: KAZVorpalA senior White House official says congressional Republicans who see the damage caused by billions in automatic spending cuts will eventually agree to raise taxes.

Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council and assistant to the president for economic policy, said that Republicans will eventually “choose bipartisan compromise over an ideological position,” on Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

“As this pain starts to gradually spread to communities” hit by $85 billion in cuts “more Republican colleagues who are concerned about this harm to their constituents will choose bipartisan compromise on revenue raising tax reform with serious entitlement reform,” said Sperling.

“They’ll choose this bipartisan compromise over what is an ideological position that every single penny of deficit reduction going forward must be on the middle class or seniors or children, and that there can’t be one penny that comes from closing loopholes or tax expenditures,” he added.

The automatic across-the-board cuts took effect on Friday after congressional leaders and President Obama were unable to broker a last-minute replacement deal. Democrats are calling for new tax revenues in any deal to replace the sequester, while Republicans insist that only other targeted cuts and entitlement reforms be included.

Watch video here:

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No, Obama Has Not Offered A Plan On Entitlements

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Photo Credit: Mark WilsonDuring a Friday news conference, a reporter asked President Obama whether he had any responsibility for the onset of the automatic spending cuts that he has warned will be devastating for the nation. “The problem that we have is a long-term problem in terms of our health care costs and programs like Medicare,” Obama said in his response. “And what I’ve said very specifically, very detailed is that I’m prepared to take on the problem where it exists — on entitlements — and do some things that my own party really doesn’t like — if it’s part of a broader package of sensible deficit reduction.”

Obama is correct that entitlements in general and health care programs in particular are the biggest source of the nation’s long-term fiscal problems. But it’s a complete falsehood that he’s offered detailed and specific plans to do something about it.

At various times during his presidency, Obama has vowed to tackle the nation’s entitlement programs. It’s true that his health care law did cut projected Medicare spending by about $700 billion over a decade. But those projected savings, along with tax increases, were used to offset $1.7 trillion in new health care spending under Obamacare rather than go toward debt reduction. In other words, they don’t fix any of the program’s structural fiscal problems.

Since Republicans took over Congress in 2011, Obama has consistently said he’d be willing to address entitlements if Republicans agreed to raise taxes — but he’s either spoken vaguely about this willingness or offered proposals that represent minor tweaks to the programs rather than fundamental changes that would put them on a sustainable financial trajectory. For instance, during the “fiscal cliff” debate, Obama floated the idea of changing the measure of inflation used to calculate Social Security benefits — a move that the Congressional Budget Office estimated would save $127 billion over a decade.

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Thousands Of Illegal Immigrants Already Released, According To Report

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Thousands of illegal immigrants ticketed for deportation have been released from federal detention centers in recent weeks, according to a report that came out even as the White House and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano denied any involvement in the policy.

Plans to release illegal immigrants in anticipation of looming budget cuts were announced earlier this week, but the report by The Associated Press detailed the policy had already taken effect and on a much larger scale. Citing federal documents, the agency said more than 2,000 illegal immigrants facing deportation had been released from immigration jails and plans exist to release 3,000 more people by the end of the month.

The newly disclosed figures are significantly higher than what the Obama administration acknowledged this week as a “few hundred” who were released without the White House’s direct knowledge. And on Friday, Napolitano, whose agency oversaw the move, said the decision to release illegal immigrants was made “in the field,” and without her knowledge.

Republicans in Congress, already critical of the plan to release illegal immigrants, demanded details, including the number of illegal immigrants released and the nature of any criminal charges they were facing as part of the deportation process.

“Simply blaming budget reductions as a means to turn a blind eye toward the national security of the American people is a dangerous plan, and one that calls into question the department’s preparations for sequestration,” wrote two Republican lawmakers, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

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Republicans and Immigration

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Photo Credit: National Review Republicans are terribly confused over illegal immigration. They still can’t quite figure out its role in the last election.

Did the issue lose them the Latino vote? Maybe — but why did they also forfeit the Asian vote, and by nearly the same margin? Why did the caricature of Republicans as old white nativists resonate with Asians as well? If support for closing the border and refusing amnesty lost Republicans the election, why do a majority of Americans continue to poll in opposition to any sort of collective amnesty?

And why, in some polls, did Latinos seem more concerned about continuing big-government readiness to help the poor and tax the wealthy than about immigration reform? Alan Simpson and Ronald Reagan, who helped to give us the 1986 amnesty, are not heroes to the Latino community. Is there statistical support for the often-repeated axiom that Latinos, as a group, are more likely than members of the so-called majority culture to embrace traditional family values — lower divorce rates, lower rates of illegitimacy, lower crime rates, higher graduation rates?

Of course, kinder, gentler talk — unlike the buffoonery that was heard in some of last year’s sloppy Republican primary debates — would have helped. Yet in 2008 circumspection and prudence did not aid all that much the moderate John McCain, who in the past had championed a sort of amnesty lite. And all the silly and often gratuitous braggadocio about upping the height of the border wall or electrifying it was more than trumped by the crass pandering of Barack Obama, who called on Latinos to “punish our enemies”; joined with a foreign nation, Mexico, to sue one of his own states, Arizona; and claimed his opponents wanted to arrest children on their way to ice-cream parlors. Note there is no national commentary deploring the fact that the president of the United States engaged in just the sort of crass ethnic showmanship that characterized the Republican debates. Apparently, because his pandering worked and the Republicans’ did not, under the laws of politics only the latter was pandering.

Confused by questions like these, Republicans don’t quite know what to do about the 11 to 15 million illegal aliens in our midst, with more to come in future years. And in lieu of wisdom, principles, and consistency, Republican are mostly experimenting, trying to square the circle and win the Latino vote with clichés about conservative values and a vaguely familiar message of amnesty for those already here predicated on no additional illegal immigration. But the problem can be only reduced, not solved, by kinder, gentler language and outreach to Latino groups, for in the end it is an existential issue well beyond trimming.

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