Senate Passes USA Freedom Act; No Amendments; On to Obama

The Senate voted 67-32 Tuesday afternoon to pass the House’s USA Freedom Act without any of the amendments offered by Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

The legislation will now go to President Obama’s desk to be signed into law Tuesday evening.

The USA Freedom Act that was previously passed by the U.S. House of Representatives would, in effect, stop the NSA’s bulk surveillance collection and reform the programs that lapsed when the Patriot Act expired at midnight Sunday, after GOP presidential candidate,Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), filibustered the spy program for 11 hours.

The first amendment that failed to pass was the McConnell-Burr amendment. According to the Guardian, this amendment would “Change the amicus on the Fisa court – the public-interests advocate who would argue, in part, about civil liberties concerns to the secret court that oversees many surveillance programs.”

McConnell and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC)wanted an amendment to the USA Freedom Act that extends the time for the government to transfer custody of phone records to private telecom companies from six months to 12 months.

“McConnell has also filed amendments that would require the US intelligence chief to certify the implementation of the new phone-records regime, demand notification of changes made by telecom companies to the kinds of call records they generate and reduce transparency in the process by which the secret Fisa court reviews the government’s surveillance orders,” the Guardian reported.

However, the Guardian correctly predicted it was unlikely that McConnell’s amendments would pass, as they lacked support from both Republicans and Democrats.

Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) said prior to the final vote, “I think it should be passed as is if we want to get it back in operation, and I think it’s foremost that this be operable.” She suggested she might be open to amendments in the future. “We could amend it … but we need to get this done now.”

Via: Breitbart

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Illegal immigrants: State Senate approves health care for many

SACRAMENTO -- A first-in-the-nation bill aimed at expanding health care for illegal immigrants sailed through the Senate on Tuesday even as some lawmakers acknowledged that thousands of legal residents are having to struggle to access health care through the state's Medi-Cal program.

In a 28-11 vote, a newly pared-down version of Senate Bill 4 by Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, would let undocumented Californians buy health insurance with their own money through the state's Covered California exchange if the state is given a waiver by the federal government. It would also allow anyone age 18 and under to enroll in Medi-Cal regardless of immigration status -- and let undocumented immigrants age 19 and up enroll in Medi-Cal if there's money provided in the state budget.

"We are here today trying to address this critical issue that is vital to the success of our California: ... providing care to our undocumented community,'' Lara told colleagues before the vote. "The time has come for us to lead.''

Last week, SB 4 was scaled down from a "health care for all" bill that would have allowed all undocumented immigrants to enroll in Medi-Cal. But that bill would have cost taxpayers from $175 million to $740 million annually -- something Gov. Jerry Brown said was just too expensive.

The exact cost of the amended SB 4 won't be known until an upcoming fiscal analysis is released shortly, said Lara spokesman Jesse Melgar, though he said he believes the cost will be lower than $175 million.

Via: San Jose Mercury News

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Sheriff Clarke Schools Rahmbo

Chicago Mayor and former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is famous for saying that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste since it allows you to do things you might not be able to get done except for the emotions of the moment spurring calls to action.

Chicago’s bloody Memorial Day weekend, which saw a dozen people killed -- including a four-year-old-girl -- certainly proved no exception to Rahm’s Rule as he called for, wait for it, stricter gun control as he spoke at a luncheon honoring police officers for valor and service. “It’s not just about how many police you have, it’s about the quantity of guns that are on the street so we actually have gun laws that back up the men and women we just recognized,” Emanuel said.

This delusional sentiment warning that otherwise inanimate objects are the problem was echoed by White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest after a bloody holiday weekend in Baltimore saw 29 shot and nine killed:

When asked about the violence yesterday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest suggested more gun control was one of the solutions.
“Obviously there’s some common sense things we could do -- certainly passage of some gun safety laws in Congress that could keep guns out of the hands of criminals would be one thing that we could do to try to limit the violence,” Earnest said.

In response to this liberal talking point, which ignores the fact that Democratic bastions like Chicago and Maryland have the strictest gun control laws in the nation, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke went on Fox Business Network’s Lou Dobbs to say that Rahmbo, a nicknamed earned for his White House ruthlessness,  was shooting blanks in suggesting the problem was guns and not the criminals who use them:

Sheriff Clarke describes Emanuel as “dead wrong,” observing that “he must have gone to the same school that ‘president’ Barack Obama did on how to run a law enforcement agency. This is what happens when you have community organizers and academic elites and others who don’t know a thing about policing in the American ghetto start to dabble in police science.”
He says the cities experiencing these heightened levels of violence “might as well get used to it because this is what you’re going to have as long as you’re going to try to turn cops into social workers and you’re going to try to get them to emphasize de-escalation and more dialogue instead of going on the offensive to go after some very dangerous individuals.”

Via: American Thinker

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Queen Hillary To Adoring Subject: ‘Go To The End Of The Line’

Most peasants are happy just to feel the breeze of Hillary Clinton’s passage through their meager, insignificant lives. But every once in a while, a serf forgets his or her place. Every once in a while, Her Majesty must put the rabble back where they belong.

Every once in a while, we get to watch

Honestly. Why is she being forced to put up with this sort of impertinence? Can’t we just coronate her already? Hillary 2016: Go to the End of the Line! P.S.

Via: The Daily Caller

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California: More Pain at the Pump

Sacramento is about to launch a new attack in its ongoing war on drivers.

California’s 48.6 cent gas tax already ranks second out of 50 states –- the feds take another 18.4 cents — and when the hidden carbon tax, part of the cap-and-trade program, is factored in, our state leads the pack by a wide margin. But this is not nearly enough, according to the political class.

Sen. Jim Beall is building a coalition of both Democrats and Republicans in the Legislature to hike gas taxes along with vehicle license fees and registration.

The San Jose lawmaker’s Senate Bill 16 slams taxpayers in three ways. First, it would raise at least $3 billion annually by increasing the gas tax by another 10 cents a gallon.  Second, it would hike the vehicle license fee, which is based on value, by more than 50 percent over 5 years. Third, it would increase the cost to register a vehicle by over 80 percent.

Although the backers of the SB16 tax increase say it is vital to make up the claimed $59 billion backlog in roadway maintenance, some of the funds are slated to go to repaying transportation bonds that, when passed, were to be paid from the general fund. This means that not all of the new revenue will go to the stated intent of fixing roads and highways.

Whatever the actual dollar amount of the backlog in roadway maintenance, this shortfall is the result of previous diversions of gas tax and truck weight revenue to budget items that have no direct impact on road improvement, and Beall’s bill would allow this practice to continue.

It should not go unnoticed that the $59 billion estimated backlog approaches the $68 billion that the governor and Legislature want to spend on the bullet train. Quentin Kopp, former chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, has become a strong critic, characterizing it as “low-speed rail” due to the changes that have been made to the original plan that voters were promised to convince them to provide seed money for the project in 2008. He adds that to be financially viable, high-speed trains need to run from 10 to 20 trains per hour, but due to the current plan, called a “blended system,” slower trains and bullet trains must share the same track, reducing the number of fast trains to about four per hour. And even supporters of the project as currently envisioned concede that the Los Angeles to San Francisco trip that voters were told would take about two-hours and forty minutes for a $50 fare, will likely take closer to 5 hours at nearly double the cost to the rider.

Via: California Political Review

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Free Trade: Less Government Everywhere Means Cheaper Stuff Here (and Everywhere)

More government means more expensive everything. Every second and penny spent paying government taxes and complying with government regulations – raises the prices of the goods and services people proffer.

And more government makes it more difficult to innovate – to create and improve goods and services. Innovation is delayed or outright prevented – because the time and money wasted on government could be much better spent developing the next great things.

More government also inflates the prices of everything trade. It ain’t free trade – if governments are involved.

“Trade Wars” actually aren’t about trade – they are about government trade policy.

If peoples are trading freely, there isn’t a “War” – there’s commerce. The “Wars” only happen when governments get involved – placing tariffs, regulations and subsidies in the way of the flow.

It becomes a regulatory arms race. A government imposes another subsidy or tax. So several others in response impose new subsidies and taxes of their own. Lather, rinse, repeat.

A horrendous example of government policy Trade Wars – is all things farm.

(O)ur Farm Bill – which warps our market – has warped the world’s as well. (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) helped beget an eight-decade-long international regulatory arms race.

Other produce-producing nations saw our lattice-work panoply of tariffs and subsidies – and felt compelled to match them. And then exceed them….

So what we now have is a global lattice-work panoply of tariffs and subsidies. A thicket that grows ever thicker – as each next government tries to outdo the last.

How bad has it become? Just on the government money side?

Check out Texas Tech’s Foreign Subsidies Database. The Executive Summary lists the omni-directional government infusion interference:

• All countries, both industrialized and developing, support their agriculture sectors, but use vastly divergent policy tools and combinations of tools. Most use guaranteed minimum prices and import tariffs to protect domestic producers.

• Industrialized country governments are moving from price supports toward decoupled direct income payments.

• Developing countries supplement their price support programs with input subsidies, which are excluded from calculations of the Aggregate Measure of Support (AMS) by the World Trade Organization (WTO), but are nonetheless trade distorting.

• Developing countries’ tariff protection is higher than that of industrialized countries.

• The use of sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures to restrict imports are more frequent among developing countries than in developed countries.

That’s a mess.

Via: Red State

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Climate Change: The Only Enemy Obama Wants to Obliterate

President Barack Obama is less than stalwart in the fight against ISIS and doesn’t seem overly concerned about Vladimir Putin’s predation in Ukraine or China’s aggression in the South China Sea. It is the fight against climate change, an allegedly dire threat to the nation’s security, that brings out his inner Churchill.

In remarks at the Coast Guard Academy commencement, Obama pledged his undying hostility to climate change and his determination to fight it on the beaches and in the fields. He called it “one of the most severe threats” we face and “an immediate risk to our national security.” President Obama is to climate change what Cato the Elder was to Carthage.

He hailed the Coast Guard for building more fuel-efficient cutters, and the Marines for deploying with portable solar panels. It was one of the most insipid calls to arms ever made by an American commander-in-chief, and there is unlikely to be much competition until President Elizabeth Warren rallies the U.S. Navy against income inequality.

From the president’s urgency, you would think that climate change is beheading American hostages and taking over large swathes of Middle Eastern countries, toward the end of establishing a hostile climate-change empire. The reality is that, even accepting his premises about the state of the science, he can point only to laughably tenuous connections between climate change and national security.

The president cited drought as one of the causes of the Syrian civil war. Yet an article in the journal Middle Eastern Studies notes that Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon experienced drought in 2007–2008. None of them collapsed into a genocidal hellhole. Nor is drought unusual in Syria. According to the article, “Over the last 50 years, from 1961 to 2009, Syria experienced nearly 25 years of drought, which represents over 40 percent of the period.”

Quite reasonably, the article counsels focusing on the corrupt and dysfunctional Syrian government as the fundamental cause of the uprising. The drought “should be considered the backdrop of years of mismanagement, unsustainable policy making and rising rural poverty, which fueled pre-existing discontent and sparked the first protests.” Not to mention the fact that countries all over the Middle East and North Africa experienced revolts at the same time.

The president warned of how climate change could create “mass migrations,” the kind of disruption that a White House document says will disproportionately affect Africa and Asia. Even if this is true, how will it implicate our national security? The United States was content to stand by while 800,000 people died in the Rwandan genocide and more than 5 million in Congo’s civil war. If that mass slaughter didn’t move us, we aren’t going to mobilize the troops to manage climate-driven mass migrations.

Another climate-change hot spot is the Arctic, with President Obama predicting that summers could be ice-free there by around 2050. Man the battle stations? Well, no. A Brookings Institution article notes that “what we’re seeing in the Arctic is that receding ice is triggering commercial competition and governance cooperation; not conflict.”

Via: Real Clear Politics

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Awesome: Patriotic Boys Rescue American Flag From A Ditch, Don’t Tell Anyone Until Pic Of It Goes Viral…

A small glimmer of hope for our future.

“America is the greatest country ever and we have to respect its symbols.”

Via: weasel Zippers

The Federalist: The ObamaCare Death Spiral Is Still Coming

By David Hogberg, The Federalist

Even if King v Burwell case fails at the U.S. Supreme Court next month, the future for the ObamaCare exchanges is still far from assured. Even if people on the 37 federal exchanges get to keep their subsidies, chances are they will eventually be caught in the vortex of the “death spiral.”

A death spiral occurs when not enough young and healthy people sign up for health insurance. Thanks to Obamacare’s design, a death spiral is inevitable. Here’s why.

Obamacare’s community rating results in insurance prices that are higher for younger people than they would be in a free market, and its guaranteed issue allows people to sign up for insurance even if they get sick, so young and healthy people have ample incentive to forgo insurance. This leaves the insurance “risk pool” older and sicker and, hence, more costly to insure. Premiums will have to rise to cover those costs, leading some of the younger and healthier people who did initially sign up to then drop out. The risk pool then becomes even older and sicker, premiums rise again, and the process repeats.

A study by the late Conrad Meier examining the effect of these laws on eight states shows that premium hikes of at least 20 percent (and usually higher) are the canary in the coal mine for a death spiral.

Is the Death Spiral Bogus?

Leftist economist Paul Krugman strongly disagrees: “There is no death spiral: On average, premiums for 2015 are between 2 and 4 percent higher than in 2014, which is a much slower rate of increase than the historical norm.” The lack of death spirals “should inspire major doubts about [conservative] ideology.”

Who says a death spiral prediction is completely wrong if a death spiral doesn’t occur immediately?

Yet, he complains, those who made predictions about death spirals aren’t admitting their errors but “pretend that [they] didn’t make the predictions [they] did.” This is serious stuff, since refusing “to accept responsibility for past errors is a serious character flaw in one’s private life. It rises to the level of real wrongdoing when policies that affect million of lives are at stake.”

Via: The Federalist

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HILLARY HAS PICKED THE PLACE WHERE SHE WILL EXPLAIN HER SOCIALIST AGENDA TO KILL THE UNITED STATES

So Hillary has finally picked out a place where she will give a big speech laying out her socialist agenda that will kill the United States:

POLITICO – The solemn memorial park at the southern tip of Roosevelt Island, Four Freedoms Park, will serve as the backdrop for Hillary Clinton’s first significant speech as a presidential candidate on June 13, when she is expected to lay out her vision for the future of the country and explain to voters why she is the right person to lead it there.

The park, designed by architect Louis Kahn and dedicated in 2012, honors the “four freedoms” Franklin D. Roosevelt outlined in his 1941 State of the Union address — freedom of speech, religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear. The symbolic backdrop won out over other potential sites for Clinton’s “vision” speech that were floated to the campaign by supporters, such as Seneca Falls, N.Y., the site of the first women’s rights convention in 1848.

In announcing the venue for the much-anticipated speech, the campaign emphasized Clinton’s long admiration of both Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Clinton is expected to be joined at the kick-off speech by her family, Chelsea and Bill Clinton. It won’t mark their first time there: Bill Clinton was one of the speakers at the 2012 dedication ceremony of the park.

Freedom from want? Yeah, this should be a great speech on how to kill a nation. After all, she has to try and become Elizabeth Warren so she’ll stay out of the race and she also has to compete with Bernie Sanders drawing huge overflow crowds at his latest campaign speeches:

Via: The Right Scoop

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Charlie Daniels: ‘America Is in Decline’; Obama ‘Not Up to the Task or Simply Doesn’t Care’ By Charlie Daniels

One of two things is obvious about Barack Obama.

He is either a weak and incompetent man who hides from the truth and is afraid of confrontation or he is as naive as Neville Chamberlain.

His refusal to even identify the enemy America is fighting all over the world, his politically correct approach to rooting out the terrorists who walk among us, his abject failure to show any backbone in dealing with Vladimir Putin, his evident ignorance of a growing threat from China, his dismissal of our most experienced and battle-hardened military officers, his disrespect for the only ally we have in the Middle East, his imaginary red lines, and his total mishandling of the War in Iraq is evidence of a man totally out of his depth or a man who is and never was interested in being president for the right reasons.

I know that Obama did not start the war in Iraq. He inherited it, but his childish finger pointing and petulant attitude does not negate the fact that, in his rush to placate the left leaning voters, he pulled out too many American troops way too fast and created a perfect power vacuum for ISIS to move into.

Now, as ISIS continues to grow exponentially in numbers, territory and ruthlessness, capturing American war equipment left behind by the Iraqi army who ran away, Obama wants to leave the job of defeating them to a bunch of ragtag, poorly lead, unmotivated and terrified Iraqi soldiers who refuse to stand and fight despite their superior numbers and weapons. 

An able and pragmatic leader realizes when a policy is not working and quickly moves on until he finds one that does. Obama evidently refuses to face the fact that the Iraqi army is not up to the task of destroying ISIS and that other measures need to be taken now while the situation is still manageable.

It only takes a couple of minutes of watching the “valley girl” State Department spokesperson to realize the caliber of personnel who have been placed in sensitive positions in this administration. Obama has surrounded himself with inexperienced ideologues and political appointees.

The ramifications of this incompetence and its trickledown effect has made itself manifest in the

complete mess at the Internal Revenue Service, the fast and furious debacle Eric Holder left behind, the glaring mistakes the state department made in Benghazi, and the list goes on.

Via: CNS News

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Obamacare ruling a time bomb for Democrats?

(CNN)Democrats and Republicans are sitting on the edge of their seats, waiting to see what the Supreme Court will decide in King v. Burwell, the looming decisionabout the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, as it has come to be known.

If the Supreme Court agrees with the challenge, an estimated 13 million people will lose their federal health insurance subsidies. The plaintiffs have argued that based on the literal reading of the legislation, the government is only supposed to provide citizens with subsidies in states that set up their own health care exchanges (a total of 16 states). The sentence in the law upon which their claim is based, The New York Times reported, was based on a sloppy error made during the drafting process. Regardless, the plaintiffs argue that in states where residents rely on federal subsidies (34 altogether), the law does not provide for subsidies.

Julian Zelizer

If the Supreme Court ruling takes away their subsidies, a substantial number of the citizens in those states will not be able to pay for their health care. Many younger and healthier Americans will take the risk and decide that they won't purchase insurance, a trend which would send prices skyrocketing. An ever-growing cycle would be devastating.

Via: CNN

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The Presidential Skill Set

What you want in a leader won’t show up on the résumé.

Former Texas governor Rick Perry is gearing up for another presidential run and recently fired a shot across the bow of some of his competitors. In an interview with The Weekly Standard, Perry said that while he had “great respect” for senators Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul, they were not ready to be president:

I’ve had more than one individual say, “You know what, if you want to be the president of the United States, you ought to go back to your home state and be the governor and get that executive experience before you go lead this country.”

Perry’s record as governor of the Lone Star State is impressive. During his tenure, Texas was an economic dynamo while the rest of the country lagged behind. Republican voters will no doubt give him a careful look this time around.

Regardless, his suggestion is wrong. There is no correlation between presidential greatness and professional background.

Presidents are almost always governors, senators, or generals. We have seen good and bad versions of each. Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter were both governors; the former had an intuitive feel for the demands of the office, while the latter was out of his depth from day one. Similarly, Lyndon Johnson was a former senator who was incredibly effective at getting Congress to do what he wanted, while John F. Kennedy’s domestic program mostly stalled. George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower demonstrated a keen understanding of the political process, while Andrew Jackson and Zachary Taylor were capricious and imperial. Ulysses S. Grant was arguably the single geatest military commander this country has ever known, yet he was an inartful president.

Moreover, the country has had several polymath presidents who turned out to be disappointments. John Adams, James Monroe, Herbert Hoover, and George H. W. Bush had done a bit of everything by the time they became president. And yet none is in the top tier. Few men have been as qualified for the job as Richard Nixon, who was forced to resign because of Watergate. On the other hand, nobody has ever been elected president with as slender a résumé as Abraham Lincoln’s; nevertheless, he is widely regarded as America’s finest leader.

Political scientists have tried to explain such incongruity, but few explanations are satisfying. In the 1970s, James David Barber offered a psychological account of presidential greatness, but his approach was too reductionist and has been abandoned. More recently, Stephen Skowronek has argued that a president’s position in the broader political cycle is crucial. Yet like most analyses built on the concept of “political realignments,” this analysis falls prey to the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Presidential greatness is such a mystery because, while it depends on some predictable factors like the size of a congressional majority, a necessary ingredient is prudence. This ineffable quality enables a leader to make the best determination in light of the practical constraints he faces. Edmund Burke wrote:

Nothing universal can be ration­ally affirmed on any moral, or any political subject. Pure metaphysical abstraction does not belong to these matters. The lines of morality are not like the ideal lines of mathematics. They are broad and deep as well as long. They admit of exceptions; they demand modifications. These exceptions and modifications are not made by the process of logic, but by the rules of prudence. Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director, the regulator, the stand­ard of them all. ­Metaphysics cannot live without ­definition; but prudence is cautious how she defines. 

Prudence is the essential virtue of presidential greatness. It is the bridge that connects the unlimited expectations we have of the president to the slender formal powers we have granted him. 

Via: The Weekly Standard

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Gohmert to BLM: ‘Keep Up The Arrogance’ - We’ll Cut Your Budget

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) told two federal land officials, “I come bearing good news. I think if your employees keep up the arrogance, keep denying access to the land then very soon we’ll be able to dramatically cut your employees back and start turning those powers over to the states.”

Gohmert’s comments came during a Joint Legislative Hearing "To protect and enhance opportunities for recreational hunting, fishing, and shooting, and for other purposes” in late May.

Deputy Director of Operations for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Steve Ellis and Deputy Chief of the U.S. Forest Service, Leslie Weldon testified at the hearing and heard complaints about denial of access onto National Forest Service and BLM land from sportsmen and law enforcement.

“Today, I wanted to take advantage of your presence here by letting you know things I’ve been hearing,” Gohmert said. “About the arrogance of people on U.S. Forest Service land and (Dept. of) Interior land – national forests - even from law enforcement, they say it’s just gotten tougher and tougher to deal with arrogant people on the national forests. Not getting access when they need it, not working with local law enforcement. And that’s been really helpful to me.”

“Some of us have been pushing for a while- let’s just dramatically cut back the U.S. Forest Service, the BLM, the Department of Interior and let each state manage the federal land within it’s boundaries.”

Gohmert later added, “I guess maybe from your standpoint it might be seen as a warning, from my standpoint it’s really good news that the arrogance of both of your employees are ultimately going to allow us to get the next president, Republican or Democrat, to end up eventually signing legislation that lets our states  - they’ll do a much better job at managing your land then your departments have been doing.”

Via: CNS News

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Concealed Carrier Saves Friends From Three Armed Teens

Three Colorado teens were shot — one fatally — while trying to rob three men at gunpoint as they were moving into an Aurora apartment late Friday night.

Aurora police say that the three teenagers approached the three intended victims in the foyer of the apartment building and held them at gunpoint. The three movers were described as being in their 20s.

“Two of the movers started to hand over their money, the third mover who was in fear for his safety of his friends, pulled out his weapon,” Aurora Police Chief Nick Metz said at a press conference on Saturday.

The armed mover opened fire and hit all three of the teens, killing one, putting a second in critical condition, and slightly wounding another.

The three assailants have not been identified. The man who defended himself and his friends was questioned by police and released.

“I don’t think we would call this necessarily a make-my-day issue,” said Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler, referring to a state law similar to the “stand your ground” law on the books in other states. “This is a straight up regular common sense statutorily codified self defense,” Brauchler added.

Via: Daily Caller

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OBAMA: I’VE RESTORED THE US AS THE ‘MOST RESPECTED COUNTRY IN THE WORLD’

Monday while President Barack Obama was answering questions at a town hall with YSEALI Fellows, an exchange program for community leaders from ASEAN, The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, he said his administration has restored the Untied States as the “the most respected country on earth.”

Obama said, “People don’t remember, but when I came into office, the Untied States in world opinion ranked below China and just barley above Russia, and today once again, the Untied States is the most respected country on earth. Part of that I think is because of the work we did to reengage the world and say we want to work with you as partners with mutual interests and mutual respect. It was on that basis we were able to end two wars while still focusing on the very real threat of terrorism and try to work with our partners in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s the reason why we are moving in the direction to normalize relations with Cuba and the nuclear deal that we are trying to negotiate with Iran.”

Via Breitbart

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Air Force for one: Massive military transport plane that usually carries 100 troops picks up US Secretary of State John Kerry to bring him home after he breaks his leg cycling

A US military C-17 transport aircraft that usually carries at least 100 troops flew to Geneva Airport to pick up Secretary of State John Kerry and fly him to Boston where he'll be treated for a broken leg.

The Air Force plane touched down in Switzerland on Monday after taking off from a US base in Ramstein, Germany, and then heading to Massachusetts after collecting the 71-year-old politician.

Kerry tweeted out 'big thanks' to his well-wishers and said he looked forward to getting his leg set and getting back to work at the State Department. 

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An Air Force C-17 transport aircraft carrying US Secretary of State John Kerry took off from Geneva on Monday

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 The C-17 (seen right) was carrying 'additional military medical personnel in keeping with standard practice'

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Kerry, 71, was carried out of a medical helicopter (left) to board on the C-17 at Geneva Airport in Switzerland

Via: Daily Mail

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Investigation: Undercover agents snuck fake explosives, banned weapons past TSA

Undercover agents were able to sneak fake explosives and banned weapons through Transportation Security Administration checkpoints, in an investigation that revealed a massive, system-wide security failure at America's airports. 

The findings were part of a DHS inspector general probe. The report is still classified, but Fox News has confirmed the investigation found security failures at dozens of airports. 

Homeland Security officials confirmed to Fox News that TSA screeners failed 67 out of 70 tests -- or 96 percent -- carried out by special investigators known as "red teams." 

In one case, an undercover agent with a fake bomb strapped to his back set off a magnetometer -- but the screener still failed to find it. 

A Department of Homeland Security spokesman told Fox News on Monday that DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson "immediately" directed changes upon learning of the investigation's findings, "to address the issues raised in the report." 

The tests, and findings, were first reported by ABC News. 

Via: Fox News

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