[VIDEO] Charleston church shooting: Suspect confesses, says he sought race war

(CNN) Dylann Roof admits he did it, two law enforcement officials said -- shooting and killing nine people he'd sat with for Bible study at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina.

But why? To start a race war, Roof told investigators, according to one of the officials.

CNN's Evan Perez and Wesley Bruer were the first to report Roof's confessing and offering his divisive rationale. Others earlier gave a glimpse into his twisted motivations -- including at the site of the shooting,Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. There, a survivor told Sylvia Johnson that Roof answered one man's pleas to stop by saying, "No, you've raped our women, and you are taking over the country ... I have to do what I have to do."

His roommate told ABC News that Roof was "big into segregation." And the Berkeley County, South Carolina, government tweeted a picture of him wearing a jacket with flags from apartheid-era South Africa and nearby Rhodesia, a former British colony that was ruled by a white minority until it became independent in 1980.

By telling authorities his aim, Roof admitted he attacked unarmed civilians for political purposes in an act of terror.

What led the 21-year-old South Carolinian to adopt this sick reasoning and take such actions Wednesday night? Did anyone else help him or even know about his plans? And what is his general mental state? Are all major, looming questions. Another is what American society should or will do now, if anything, to prevent similar tragedies.

In the meantime, a community -- and nine families, in particular -- are left to mourn.

Via: CNN

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Some House Democrats Join Republicans to Repeal Part of Obamacare

With the support of nearly 50 Democrats, the House passed legislation Thursday to repeal the medical device tax—a much-despised part of Obamacare.

The bill came to the floor as Capitol Hill anxiously awaits the decision in a Supreme Court case that could potentially change the future of Obamacare. Lawmakers are using that extra adrenaline to put their energy into the war on words regarding Obamacare's success or failure.

Most likely, this bill just makes a statement about the law itself.

(RELATED: GOP Close on Post-SCOTUS Obamacare Plan) 

"This tax is a prime example of Obamacare's flawed priorities," wrote House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan in a statement released shortly after the vote.

The White House has threatened to veto the bill, but that didn't stop 46 Democrats from joining with the GOP majority to pass it, 280-140.

Republicans aren't giving up hope of it being signed into law—perhaps in the future as part of a bill in response if the Supreme Court limits Obamacare's federal subsidies in the King v. Burwell case.

(RELATED: The GOP's Wish List for Fixing Obamacare)

"We consider it to be one of the flaws in the Affordable Care Act, which there is bipartisan opposition to. It's unnecessary, it's expensive, it increases the cost of health care, and so we think it has a good chance at actually being signed by the president," said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, in an interview.

"So far, it's his advisers who recommended a veto," Smith added. "The president himself has not expressed a personal opinion, so we think it's still possible that it could be enacted."

(The standard language of a White House veto threat states that the president's advisers would recommend the president veto the legislation should it reach his desk.)

"H.R. 160 would increase the deficit to finance a permanent and costly tax break for industry without improving the health system or helping middle-class Americans," the White House statement said about the bill.

Via: National Journal

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Katie Pavlich: ICE director says no one fired for releasing more than 65,000 criminal aliens

As Twitchy reported earlier today, testimony from a House Oversight hearing on a massive security compromise of federal computer systems led a number of people to ask just what it would take for a federal employee to be fired, or at the very least shamed into resigning. Office of Personnel Management director Katherine Archuleta was reportedly offered chances to apologize and resign but “declined to do either.”

This afternoon, House subcommittees on national security and on health care, benefits, and administrative rules met to discuss President Obama’s 2014 executive actions on immigration, which allowed illegal aliens to apply for deferred action status, which protected them from deportation and authorized them to work legally in the United States. Those aliens would then be eligible to obtain Social Security numbers and other government benefits.

Among those to testify was U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Sarah Saldaña, and Townhall editor Katie Pavlich also makes the case that it’s high time for some high-level government firings.

Via: Twitchy

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[VIDEO] How did federal agency get $500M from stimulus? ‘We misled Congress,’ ex-official says

On paper, it sounded like a true government success story: The Social Security Administration in September opened a "state-of-the-art" data center in Maryland, housing wage and benefit information on almost every American, "on time and under budget." 

However, six years after Congress approved a half-billion dollars for the project -- the largest building project funded by the 2009 stimulus -- a whistleblower says the center was built on a lie. 

"We misled Congress," Michael Keegan, a former associate commissioner who worked on the project, told FoxNews.com. 

Officials originally claimed they needed the $500 million to replace their entire, 30-year-old National Computer Center located at agency headquarters in Woodlawn, Md. But Keegan says they overstated their case -- the agency has no plans to replace the center, and only moved a fraction of the NCC to the new site. 

Keegan's claims were first heard last week at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing, where he testified on alleged retaliation he faced as a whistleblower. Though two watchdog agencies previously discarded his complaints, documents submitted to Congress and obtained by FoxNews.com along with congressional records appear to back him up, at least in part. They show:  

1) SSA officials told Congress in 2009, and as late as 2011, they planned to "replace" the National Computer Center, using $500 million from the stimulus. 

2) That never happened. Rather, the agency built a new data center called theNational Support Center, in Urbana, Md. This now houses data center functions from the National Computer Center, and is what was touted inSeptember 2014. But the original, supposedly outdated NCC continues to operate, and hundreds still work there. And transcribed depositions from Keegan's lawsuit against the agency show top officials indeed have no plans to replace the entire NCC. 

Keegan maintains the agency didn't have to move anybody out of the NCC, and could have simply renovated the floor holding the old data center. 

"The data center occupies one half of one floor in a four-story building," he told FoxNews.com. "We didn't need to build [the new center] to begin with." 

Agency leaders disagree, and forged ahead. Yet the records show while officials originally talked about replacing the building, there are no plans to do so now. 

Via: Fox News

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Why the latest government hack is worse than the Snowden affair

Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Katherine Archuleta testifies on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. (Cliff Owen/Associated Press

When you read about the recent hack of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), in which China is thought to have filched millions of security clearance application forms, you might have shrugged your shoulders. Just another hack, right? No big deal, right? Wrong. This cyber burglary is an even greater intelligence catastrophe than the Edward Snowden affair. And our negligent leaders, bureaucracies and their contractors need to be held responsible.

When I applied for my security clearance in 2010, as I was preparing to work with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan as a social scientist, I filled out a long form called an SF-86. Practically everyone with a federal government security clearance knows this document. It takes a lot of time to complete and requires in-depth disclosures of a very personal nature. My SF-86 contains my Social Security number, information about my credit history, my job history (including a dispute with a past employer), contact information for my closest friends and family in the United States and abroad, all non-Americans with whom I am close, a list of every foreign official I ever met, every place I lived and people who could verify that I lived there, and much more. If I had ever been arrested or had any history of drug abuse, I would have had to report that, too.

So you can understand my frustration when I discovered that China had likely hacked the OPM and two of its contractors and made off with at least 4 million SF-86s on former, current and prospective U.S. government workers.

Beyond narrow concerns about identity theft, think about the national security implications.

Via: Washington Post

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[EDITORIAL] Washington Times: Obama's Red Lines and Big Lies

President Obama warned in August 2012 that Syria must not cross his “red line” against using chemical weapons against the rebels — or else. President Bashar Assad has continued to cross Mr. Obama’s red line, and we’re still waiting to see the “else.”

What is plain to see is a heavy rain of chemical weapons on rebel fighters in Syria, in 29 incidents this spring alone. The Washington Times reported Wednesday that the deal Mr. Obama made last year with the government in Damascus “left chlorine on the table as a weapon.” Barrel bombs filled with weaponized chlorine do deadly work.

To add insult to incompetent negotiating, Mr. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry continue to embrace the lie that the United States has succeeded in getting “all the chemical weapons out of Syria.”

Mr. Obama clearly understands the consequences of doing nothing. In 2012, he said that “the point … made about chemical and biological weapons is critical. That’s an issue that doesn’t just concern Syria. It concerns our close allies in the region, including Israel. It concerns us. We cannot have a situation where chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people.

“We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is [when] we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.”

Or he can just change his story. Our reporter Guy Taylor reports that “House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce plans on Wednesday to highlight how claims by the administration and the United Nations to have successfully rid Syria of chemical weapons have fallen far short — leaving the regime with a deadly arsenal of barrel bombs filled with weaponized chlorine.”

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/17/editorial-obama-must-deal-with-syrias-chemical-wea/#ixzz3dRvuHPA6 
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

Ghost From Clintons’ Past Surfaces In Explosive, Newly-Discovered Audio Sure To Haunt Hillary

Newly uncovered audio sheds light on the state of mind of the White House during the Clinton administration toward a “right-wing conspiracy” years before Hillary Clinton ever uttered the phrase.

Former Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Donna Shalala, interviewed in 1994 by the late Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Haynes Johnson, shed light on the early attitudes of the Clinton White House. “They’ve become paranoid. Paranoia. They think people are out to get them – this right-wing conspiracy stuff,” Shalala said at the time.

The audio, which you can listen to below, was first acquired by The Washington Free Beacon from the Wisconsin Historical Society at the University of Wisconsin. Quotes from the interview were featured in the 1996 book, The System, written by Johnson with David Broder, which focused on the 1990s health care debate, but were not attributed to any specific person until now.

“There is a feeling in the White House,” Shalala said, “and I don’t know whether it’s [James] Carville or [Paul] Begala or who’s giving them the materials. But sitting on the desks of their staff there’s these materials on this right-wing conspiracy. My reaction to that is, ‘So what? So what’s new?'”

“[The Clintons are] feeling sorry for themselves. They talk about [conspiracies] all the time,” she added. “That there really is a conspiracy out there to get us. That we don’t have a chance, people don’t understand how much good we’ve done. Our message isn’t getting across because these people are beating us up.”

Via: Western Journalism

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Charleston Church Massacre Happened In Gun-Free Zone

The Charleston, S.C., church massacre is already drawing comparisons to the tragedies at the Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Conn., and at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo. because it happened in a gun-free zone.

What do you think?

Nine people were were fatally shot at a historically black church Wednesday night.

What do you think?

Although South Carolina is one of several states around the country that issue concealed carry licenses on a “shall issue” basis, legal gun owners are not permitted to carry their firearms into places of worship.

What do you think?

States that issue such permits grants gun licenses to residents without the “arbitrary bias and discretion, compelling the issuing authority to award the permit,” Buckeye Firearms notes.

According to South Carolina law, civilians may not carry their legal fire arms “on school premises (including day care and preschool facilities), in law enforcement offices or facilities, in court facilities, at polling places on election days, in churches or other religious sanctuaries, or in hospitals or medical facilities. (S.C. Code Ann.§ 23-31-215.)”

What do you think?

The penalties for carrying a firearm in such places include a fine of at least $1,000, up to one year in jail, or both.

What do you think?

The alleged gunman, who was captured in Shelby, N.C., Thursday, is 21-year-old Dylann Storm Roof, a white male from Lexington, S.C. Reuters reported Thursday that Roof’s father gave him a .45 caliber pistol for his 21st birthday in April.

What do you think?

That’s also the day when he became eligible to apply for a concealed carry permit. It is unknown if he is a South Carolina permit holder.

Via: Daily Caller

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Pope Comes Out Against Carbon Credits, Disappoints True Eco-Believers

Listen to what that preposterous priest just said. He breathlessly claims he’s “concerned about the negative consequences for humanity and for all creation resulting from the degradation of some basic natural resources such as water, air, and land, brought about by an economic and technological progress which does not recognize and take into account its limits.”

Yes, that John Paul II was quite an eco-leftist, technophobe, and doomsday prophet. No, wait a second. He wasn’t, of course. Yet he published a Common Declaration on Environmental Ethics with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew back on June 10, 2002, just 13 years ago. His successor, Benedict XVI, preached along the same lines. And his successor, Pope Francis, earlier today released his environmental encyclical to great acclaim by the global Left and their acolytes in the mainstream media.

Well, not quite universal hallelujahs. The National Catholic Reporter quotes Pennsylvania State University meteorology professor and longtime global warming alarm activist Michael E. Mann as saying although the consensus among the climate alarmist friends he has communicated with is that the pope “got the science right,” Mann is disappointed at the pontiff’s “overly conservative” approach. Some people are never satisfied.

On the whole, however, the MSM have hailed the pope’s statement with breathless excitement. They have not suddenly gotten religion, of course, but are simply using the pontiff for their own advocacy efforts. For decades they ignored or ridiculed the doings of conservative popes, but when a Jesuit liberal from Argentina was elected pontiff, they suddenly started kissing his ring.

As it is so difficult, takes incredible skill, and is quite time-consuming to do a Web search of the words “the Pope” and “the environment” for the writings and sermons of the past few popes, the MSM has no context for understanding the current pontiff’s teachings on ecology.

Via: American Spectator
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Black activists fear ‘race war’ amid Charleston shooting

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Black community activists raised alarms Thursday about the mass murder at the historic black church potentially sparking race riots in Charleston, South Carolina.

“We don’t need any more bloodshed and we don’t need a race war,” pleaded J. Denise Cromwell, a black community activists. “Charleston has a lot of racial tension. … We’re drowning and someone is pouring water over us.”

Ms. Cromwell said that nerves were still raw from the fatal shooting two months ago of a black man, Walter Scott, by a white police officer in neighboring North Charleston, which ignited major protests.

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SEE ALSO: Obama calls for gun control in wake of ‘senseless’ S.C. church murders

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Black activist Michelle Felder, 58, said she feared the city’s young people “aren’t thinking” and might seek revenge, an emotional reaction that she said she understood but was mature enough to resist.

“This is 2015 and we are still going through the same things we went through 50 years ago,” she said. “This is so sickening. We are so tired.”

Religious and political leaders have repeatedly called for calm since the shooting Wednesday night.

Via: Washington Times

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Feds Charge More Than 200 People With Medicare Fraud

The West Miami drug store was called E-Z Pharmacy. A more apt name would have been “E-Z Money.”

The former owners — Eklis Almanza and husband Juan E. Diaz Gonzalez — pocketed $4.8 million from the taxpayer-funded Medicare program by submitting bogus claims for prescription drugs that none of their customers ever needed or received, according to a federal indictment.

In Little Havana, Enemisis Torres is accused of selling forged and altered prescriptions of Medicare patients at her rehabilitation clinic, Palmetto Comprehensive Healthcare, to a ring of Miami-Dade pharmacy owners. They in turn fraudulently billed the federal program $21.2 million, prosecutors say. Her clinic was raided early Thursday.

The defendants are among 73 South Florida suspects charged this week in Miami federal court with bilking Medicare, including dozens accused of defrauding the Part D prescription drug program that was implemented a decade ago during the Bush administration. The total amount of fraudulent claims in the regional sweep: $262 million.

“By stealing from Medicare ... they have robbed all of us,” U.S. Attorney Wifredo Ferrer told reporters Thursday.

The South Florida arrests — carried out by armies of FBI and Health and Human Services agents — are part of this week’s nationwide take-down of 243 Medicare fraud offenders in states across the country, extending to Alaska. The tally of false claims in the nationwide crackdown: $712 million.

The Justice Department in Washington and U.S. attorney's office in Miami held back-to-back news conferences Thursday to spotlight the latest schemes to fleece the Medicare program, which continues to be plagued by billions of dollars in losses to fraud every year.

Ferrer called the latest healthcare fraud take-down the “largest ever” over the past decade, with Miami, the capital of Medicare fraud, accounting for one-third of all defendants charged this week. “It’s unacceptable, staggering and pretty shocking,” he said.

Via: Miami Herald

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Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article24842470.html#storylink=cpy

Subsidies and the Price of Health Insurance

Back in 2010 when ObamaCare was enacted, the Pelosi-Reid Congress was running its second trillion-dollar deficit, with two more still to come. So just when they were borrowing money like never before, Democrats passed the biggest entitlement in decades.

At Forbes on January 4, Ben Munro wrote that “2015 looks to be the first year healthcare spending will reach $10,000 per person.” From that alone, one might conclude that Americans are a sickly lot, for that $10K a person adds up to well more than $3T for the nation. And now it’s being reported that health insurance companies need to raise the price of premiums for 2016.

On June 1 in “Will these big Obamacare rates get approved?” at CNBC, Dan Mangan reported: “There are some eye-popping proposed Obamacare rate increases for next year.” Mangan quoted Blue Cross Blue Shield: “The main driver of the increase in the proposed rates is that the actual claims [are] significantly higher than expected.”

On June 2 in “Health insurers seek big premium hikes for ObamaCare plans in 2016,” Fox News reported: “Dozens of health insurers selling plans under ObamaCare have requested hefty premium increases for 2016, according to preliminary information published Monday by the White House […] many of which are in the double-digit percentages.”

On June 10 in “Why Are The 2016 Obamacare Rate Increases So Large?” at Forbes, Robert Laszewski, a frequent guest on cable TV news, wrote:

You just can’t look at this data and come away with a conclusion other than the big cost increases driven by too few people signing up has started. And it has started a year earlier than most of us expected. … What has concerned many actuaries is how the market penetration for Obamacare slowed considerably in year two in the states with the best first year enrollment results.

Via: American Thinker

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GOP Not Quite Ready for the Health Care Victory It’s Dreamed About

Sisters hold a sign at a rally outside of the Supreme Court during arguments in the King v. Burwell case on March 4, 2015. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call File Photo)

With each passing day of Supreme Court suspense, the image of the dog catching the bus has come more warily into focus for congressional Republicans.

The wait could end as soon as Thursday, when the justices are expected to announce rulings in a few of the 17 cases remaining on this year’s docket. If there’s still no decision on the fate of the landmark health care law, many GOP members will indulge in a collective sigh of relief — because they will have been given a little more time to cobble together plans for a moment they’ve spent five years dreaming about.

There has been a striking disconnect between the overriding Republican policy wish for this decade, which is to see President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement eviscerated, and the party’s preparations for the very real possibility that wish could be granted. The volume and passion of their relentless Obamacare criticism has been inversely proportional to their public level of coordination and precision about what they’d do differently.

Their longstanding “repeal and replace” mantra has been all about the former until recently, although the political imperative to come up with a replacement has advanced from the theoretical to the potentially imminent as King v. Burwell has progressed to one step from ultimate resolution.

The Supreme Court has the power to take away a central tent pole of the law, the medical coverage subsidies now being provided to about 6.4 million people in the 34 states where the federal government runs the insurance marketplaces. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit argue the wording of the law only permits those subsidies for people buying coverage from health exchanges run by states. The Obama administration says some sloppy legislative drafting should not be allowed to countermand the statute’s universally understood intent.

But if the court calls a halt to the federal marketplace subsidies, the economic pain will be immediate for millions of potential 2016 voters, many of them in presidential and congressional battleground states.

The subsidies, delivered as a tax credit to people with lower incomes, average $272 a month, meaning without them many will no longer be able to afford any coverage.

The biggest population affected would be in Florida, where 1 in 12 people younger than 65, or 1.3 million, are now getting federal help. The same is true for 3 percent or more of the adults in the likely presidential swing states of Michigan, Virginia, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Via: Roll Call

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Manhattan Institute's Steve Malanga: 'Our Elected Representatives Played Chicken With Pension Funds'

You can thank your elected officials at the state and local level for making a mess of the public pension system, says Steve Malanga, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

"Around the country, state and local officials have increasingly discovered over the years that they can exploit the complex and sometimes ill-defined accounting of government pension systems, as well as loopholes in their own laws governing those pensions," he writes in the Washington Examiner.
"Over time, elected officials came to promise workers politically popular new benefits without setting aside the money to pay for them, declared 'holidays' from contributions into pension systems and changed their own accounting systems midstream to make the systems seem better funded — all just ways of passing obligations on to future taxpayers."

Special: Al Gore Attacks Scientist for Exposing Global Warming Lie

Laws and rulings that make it difficult to reform pensions have contributed to fiscal meltdowns in places such as Detroit and Stockton, California. 

The ugly results have now become apparent.

"Our elected representatives played a deceptive game of chicken with pension funds. And now the chickens have come home to roost," Malanga says. 

America's states and municipalities face a $1.5 trillion pension shortfall, and possibly $4 trillion if the funds' investment returns don't match expectations, he explains.

"In places with the deepest debt, taxpayers face rising taxes and declining services, which is hardly the sort of place that a family or a business wants to call home," he says.

For example, he said that places that cannot reform pensions, or where legislators were slow to act, are inevitably seeing tax increases to finance steep obligations. 

Via: Newsmax

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WashPost Blogger Pleads: 'Do Not Foist Brian Williams on MSNBC' -

“Do not foist Brian Williams on MSNBC,” he begged in a headline. Doesn’t MSNBC have enough problems? 

Someone inside the network must think: MSNBC’s schedule is fracturing and struggling, they want to have better breaking-news chops. Why not bring in the “news” man to make it less of a leftist talk-TV channel? Wemple won’t have it: 

Putting aside the structural problem that liberals are splintered in their brand loyalties, MSNBC has caused a great deal of its struggles. Lifeless programming, tepid panel discussions, excessive liberal agreeing and the occasional nasty comment followed by an excellent apology — these are the dynamics that help to account for the cable channel’s worm-level ratings.

One problem it doesn’t need is Brian Williams. By one count, this is the guy who’s been busted by an internal investigation for 11 quite outrageous embellishments regarding his past. At the same time, Williams is a smooth news delivery vehicle with a high name recognition: If he is unloaded on MSNBC, how much worse can things get?

Considerably. MSNBC’s critics are a motivated bunch and are already busy enough with Ed Schultz, Chris Matthews & Co. Just watch what happens when Williams pilots a report having to do with Iraq or helicopters or Israel. Then again, there really aren’t a lot of places to hide a liability like Williams, whose six-month suspension is up in August. Newsrooms don’t designate set-asides for embellishers.

Via: Newsbusters

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