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WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 (UPI) -- The U.S. House has approved a bill that would extend a ban on the manufacture of plastic guns that cannot be detected by security-screening devices. The Senate is likely to approve a 10-year extension of the ban, which expires Monday, when it returns to Washington next week, the Washington Post reported Tuesday. It's the first piece of firearms legislation both houses have agreed on following the mass shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut last December, but at least one lawmaker said the bill didn't go far enough. In a statement before the House...

GOS, Nigeria – Entombed at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in an upended tugboat for three days, Harrison Odjegba Okene begged God for a miracle. The Nigerian cook survived by breathing an ever-dwindling supply of oxygen in an air pocket. The other 11 seaman aboard the Jascon 4 died... It was a shock for the diver while he was down there looking for bodies, and we (in the control room) shot back when the hand grabbed him on the screen." Okene kept faith with the psalm he recited, that promises to "give thanks in your name, Lord," at a...

An American chemistry teacher was shot to death as he was jogging in Benghazi on Thursday, highlighting persistently tenuous security in the eastern Libyan city where the U.S. ambassador was killed last year. There were no credible claims of responsibility, but suspicion was likely to fall on Islamic militants active in Benghazi. It came five days after al-Qaida's American spokesman called upon Libyans to attack U.S. interests everywhere as revenge for U.S. special forces snatching an al-Qaida suspect off the streets of Tripoli in October and whisking him out of the country. The U.S. State Department identified the teacher as...

MSNBC host Chris Matthews said President Obama “came amongst us” in an awestruck voice during a post-interview analysis on Hardball Thursday.Panelist David Corn said Obama appeared to remain frustrated with the media culture in Washington, but Matthews countered with Obama’s appearance on his program.“David Corn, you skeptic,” Matthews said. “He came to us today. He came amongst us.”Full exchange: DAVID CORN: I saw a president who remains frustrated with the political media culture that he has to work within, and that he’s really looking to rally people, students here–CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, if that’s the case –CORN: – and supporters, and people within the...

FR CANTEEN MISSION STATEMENT Showing support and boosting the morale of our military and our allied military and the family members of the above.Honoring those who have served before. FReeper Canteen Just Hangin' Cafe Come on in, we're open Need a place just to hang out? This is it. We serve coffee, tea, conversation and music. Our AWESOME military, our AWESOME allies, and their families are welcomed and honored here. No worries in the FReeper Canteen Just Hangin' Cafe. Grab a cup and start a conversation. You never know who you might meet in the Cafe. Glad you could...

...“In that moment you become a whole new person,” the now 31-year-old says from the airlines’ offices in Enfield, just outside of Halifax. “You shut down and your survival instinct kicks in, and my thought was — how do we get all these people off the plane — and how do we survive this? “The whole time you are in the situation, in the moment, you are acting, but you are also thinking: ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’.... On Thursday morning Nicole Foran will be presented with the Star of Courage — a medal recognizing acts of “conspicuous courage...

The Senate Majority PAC is up with another big ad buy on behalf of Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), a top GOP target in 2014. The ad focuses on stressing Hagan's support of aspects of ObamaCare — without once mentioning the law by name — and criticizing her most likely opponent, North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis (R), on healthcare issues. "North Carolina can count on Kay Hagan. She protects my Medicare and Social Security. She took on drug companies to lower the costs of prescriptions for seniors, voted to cut waste and fraud in Medicare, forced insurance companies to cover...

For almost a decade now, Chris Matthews has served as a barometer for baby-boom progressives' attitude toward Barack Obama -- from the "thrill" that went up his leg when he heard the presidential candidate speak in 2008 to the utter disappointment following last October's debate in Denver. That's why Matthews' interview with Obama, which takes place at 2 p.m. today and airs at 7 p.m. on MSNBC, is a crucial one for the president, and for MSNBC. For Obama: The last time the MSNBC vet interviewed Obama, at West Chester University in 2008, it was a love-in, the "thrill" having...

San Francisco could become the first major city to outlaw the release of commercially bred butterflies as the practice that took off nationwide in the mid-1990s persists at weddings, funerals and other special events. While the release of butterflies is a meaningful sight to behold, it all comes with potential environmental hazards. To local urban lepidopterist Liam O’Brien, the act is inhumane and poses a detriment to species, such as the prized monarchs, that are on the decline. Lepidoptery deals in the study and collection of moths and butterflies. “They are not creatures to be owned. They are not party...

Donna Baker of Adrian, Mich., owns an accounting firm, payroll company and retail store. Her husband, Kim, is the sixth generation owner of a dairy farm. While the four businesses are separate entities, they count as one employer under the health-care law due to a technicality — Mrs. Baker is a minority stakeholder in the 1,800-acre property that her husband’s farm sits on, plus she helps out with some of the farm’s bookkeeping. As a result, the Bakers are subject to aggregation rules in the U.S. tax code, which means they would be required to offer health-insurance benefits to their...

Despite the sequester, the Department of Homeland Security has just completed a hiring blitz of attorneys to oversee and manage immigration litigation. Almost all of these new civil service attorney hires hail from an activist pro-amnesty and pro-asylum background. Sources within the Department of Homeland Security report that the process for hiring these new career civil service lawyers was unconventional and was conducted by an Obama political appointee within DHS. The new attorneys have activist backgrounds with a variety of pro-amnesty groups such as the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), the Advancement Project, and open borders groups...

President Obama acknowledged on Thursday that he lived with his Kenyan uncle for a brief period in the 1980s while preparing to attend Harvard Law School, contradicting a statement more than a year ago that the White House had no record of the two ever meeting. Their relationship came into question on Tuesday at the deportation hearing of his uncle, Onyango Obama, in Boston immigration court. His uncle had lived in the United States illegally since the 1970s and revealed in testimony for the first time that his famous nephew had stayed at his Cambridge apartment for about three weeks....

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve looked at the various polls on Barack Obama’s performance and noted the dramatic decline in approval on both policy areas and personal qualities. Today, the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake and Sean Sullivan take a look at the former, and inform readers that Obama is in much bigger trouble than just dropping below 40% overall approval: Recent polling from the Pew Research Center and Quinnipiac University has shown Obama’s approval rating on almost all major issues plunging into the 30s — below even his lowest-ever overall approval rating, which has stood around 40 percent...

WASHINGTON, December 4, 2013 — How far will President Obama go to control what we see and hear? How about removing First Amendment protections from FOX News or even from MSNBC, ABC, CNN, CBS or NBC. Maybe no free speech or freedom of the press for The Washington Times nor The Washington Post nor The New York Times or any other major media? Obama would justify it by claiming they are all tainted because they seek to profit from the news business. Don’t laugh. This is the danger from the ground-breaking legal theory being argued by the Obama Administration to...

The bitcoin bubble appears to have burst as a stepped series of price crashes are underway with the price currently standing at 1074 down form 1240 barely a day earlier. A clue to its future direction can be discerned from the unfolding technical price patterns, that just as I wrote wrote in the run up to the peak of the Bitcoin bubble with the price converging on USD 1250 that the market was primed to crash and all it was waiting for was any even marginally negative news to act as trigger for increasing waves of market panics as GREED...

Simple question from Gowdy to the legal panel: How far can Obama go? Now that he’s claimed the royal prerogative to not enforce immigration law against young illegals, not enforce O-Care’s employer mandate against businesses, and not enforce the new rules about “essential benefits” against insurers who un-cancel old plans, what else can he choose not to enforce? If Congress imposes a mandatory minimum sentence for certain offenses, presumably Obama could refuse to enforce that by granting blanket commutations for thousands of people convicted of those offenses. Presumably he could also refuse to enforce election laws. Why not? What’s the...

The medical director of Ben Taub Hospital's Emergency Center has been charged with criminal trespass and harassment, accused of threatening a woman she labeled a "homewrecker." [snip] The woman, warned by Siler-Fisher's husband that his wife was en route to the house, departed with her children before the doctor arrived, according to the charge. The charge also said surveillance video showed Siler-Fisher entering the home by kicking in the doggy door. The woman told police that Siler-Fisher called twice to threaten her during the drive, using profanity and vulgar language. She also said the doctor tweeted her 25 text messages,...

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution says “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the free of speech. . . .” This right is, perhaps, the one that Americans cherish most and that distinguishes America from all other countries in the world. To which Obama’s Department of Justice says “Blow it out your ear. Free speech? We don’t need no stinkin’ free speech.” Two top U.S. Department of Justice officials in Tennessee have announced that saying mean things about Muslims on social media (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) may violate Muslim civil rights and open the...

On Nov. 26, Senate staff received a mass email with instructions on how to confirm their enrollment after selecting a program through the site. Confirmation was a point of contention during the question-and-answer portion of a Nov. 19 briefing for staff, who complained they kept encountering internal error messages.Open enrollment for members of Congress and their designated staff ends at 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 9, and both chambers appear to be scrambling to help users confront DC Health Link glitches. Briefings continue as the clock ticks toward what’s been described as a “hard deadline” by representatives of the District-operated insurance...

"....Starting in January, insurers will be forced to offer coverage to individuals suffering from pre-existing conditions. When drafting the legislation, lawmakers wanted to make sure that individual insurers didn’t worry about getting stuck with a disproportionate share of very sick enrollees with high medical costs. If that were to happen, it could motivate insurers to attempt to manipulate plan offerings so as to “cherry pick” the healthier participants. So lawmakers included several provisions to guard against this possibility, one being the risk corridors. A simple way of explaining the risk corridors program is that it requires insurers to estimate their...

".......Advocates for greater government transparency said they find the secrecy surrounding the names and stories of the individuals standing behind the president Tuesday odd, especially considering Obama's pledge to run the most transparent administration in his history. “[It] seems totally bizarre,” said Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “Posing behind the president at a press event isn't a good way to preserve anonymity.” ....The botched rollout of healthcare.gov and Obama’s broken promise that consumers could keep their health plans despite new Obamacare rules have seen the president’s approval rating hit new lows in...

A top executive at White Castle cooked up a spicy retort on Wednesday to calls by some fast-food workers to raise the minimum wage to $15 a hour from $7.25, arguing such an increase would force the hamburger chain to close nearly half of its locations and lay off thousands of workers. "To more than double the federally mandated starting wage wouldn't be bad for White Castle, it would be absolutely catastrophic," Jamie Richardson, vice president of White Castle, told CNBC's "Closing Bell" on Wednesday. Such an increase would force the closure of more than 200 of its 406 locations...

A cancer patient, who publicly discussed the cancellation of his insurance under ObamaCare, now says he has been informed by the Internal Revenue Service that he is going to be audited. Bill Elliot appeared on Fox News on November 7th to discuss the cancellation of his insurance. He claims he was told that his cancer was considered “beyond the catastrophic previous condition” and his plan was being canceled because of ObamaCare regulations. Elliot, who has Stage 4 cancer, informed viewers he wasn’t going to pay the $1,500 a month for the new plan being offered, preferring not to burden his...

Full title: Expert: At least 129 million will ‘not be able to keep’ health care plan if Obamacare fully implemented If Obamacare is fully implemented, 68 percent of Americans with private health insurance will not be able to keep their plan, according to health care economist Christopher Conover. Conover is a research scholar in the Center for Health Policy & Inequalities Research at Duke University and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. In an interview with The Daily Caller, he laid out what he estimates the consequences of Obamacare’s implementation will ultimately be. “Bottom line: of the 189...

T.J. HOLMES, SUBSTITUTE HOST: Bob, you covered the White House for a long time. You’ve been around, and you were shaking your head there the whole time and wanting to chime in. What is it? BOB FRANKEN, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well, let's use the "P" word here. This is propaganda when it comes from the White House: government covering the government. It’s not what you’re supposed to do in the United States of America. But we have an administration, every president gets to the point where he dislikes the press. It’s that simple. And every administration tries to manipulate the press....

One of the biggest public supporters of the Affordable Care Act has reportedly decided that some of his staff should be exempted from the new law. CNN reports that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is the only top congressional leader to exempt some of his staff from having to buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act exchanges. That’s right, even House Majority Leader John Boehner and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who have voted against the healthcare law dozens of times, have told their staff to sign up for insurance plans through the federal exchange. Yahoo News has reached out...

JUNEAU, Alaska — An Alaska scientist whose observations of drowned polar bears helped galvanize the global warming movement has retired as part of a settlement with a federal agency. Charles Monnett was briefly suspended in 2011 from his work with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement — now known as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management —during an inspector general's investigation into a polar bear research contract he managed. Investigators in their report released last year said the probe was prompted by a complaint from an Interior Department employee who alleged that Monnett had wrongfully released...

Key factions of the Democratic Party, which have largely been unified through some trying times in 2013, are now turning on each other. Amid the botched rollout of ObamaCare and plummeting poll numbers, the simmering tensions within the party have intensified — and become very public. A flashpoint came this week when Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal bashing Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and her allies for trying to lure the party over a “populist cliff.” They took aim at her proposal to pay for an expansion of Social Security benefits...

<p>SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): One of the most disturbing aspects of the Obama presidency is the willingness of this president to disregard the law, to ignore the law. You know, we were talking a few minutes ago about Obamacare. And you mentioned it’s the law of the land. If it’s the law of the land, the president shouldn't keep ignoring the law.</p>

A young entrepreneur was baffled when a Portland security guard thwarted her attempt to help her father pay for her braces by selling mistletoe - but told her she could beg, instead. Madison Root, 11, arrived bright and early at Portland Saturday Market, setting up a sign and basket next to the Skidmore Fountain in the downtown area to sell her wares to the crowds. ... Madison Root knew her upcoming orthodontic work would be expensive, and wanted to contribute. She spent Friday cutting mistletoe at her uncle's farm in Newberg, then wrapped it in clear cellophane and tied it...

Mounting opposition to ObamaCare among young adults is creating a new crisis for the White House. While the federal enrollment website HealthCare.gov appears to be improving by the day, polls show the “young invincibles” key to making the law work are becoming less likely to enroll. Younger people were skeptical of the healthcare reform law even before its troubled rollout, despite their support for President Obama. But polling indicates the problems facing HealthCare.gov — a site the administration initially touted as a hip, tech-friendly experience — have reinforced their doubts about the need to have health insurance at all. “The...

~ The FReeper Canteen Presents ~ ~ Remembering Our Troops!! ~ LAIKA'S LOOK U.S. Army Sgt. Justin R. Pereira, right, and Laika 5, a military working dog trained to detect tactical explosives, provide security as Afghan border police break ground on a new checkpoint in the Spin Boldak district of Afghanistan's Kandahar province, March 25, 2013. Pereira and Laika 5 are assigned to the 2nd Infantry Division's 2nd Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 4th Striker Brigade Combat Team. U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Shane Hamann Canteen Mission Statement Showing support and boosting the morale ofour military and our allies'...

The White House has offered “no response” to a months-old call from congressional Democrats to bypass Congress and use executive action to raise workers’ wages, the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus told Salon Tuesday afternoon. “It wasn’t responded to,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz. “I mean, the response would have been, ‘We’re working on it, we’re looking into it,’ ‘We feel it’s a good idea,’ or, ‘No, we’re not going to do it.’ Any of those is a response. We received none of that.” Grijalva pledged that, starting with a Thursday rally at the National Air and Space Museum,...

For subsidized plans to go into effect under ObamaCare, the government needs to hold up its end of the bargain – by paying its portion of premiums and cost-sharing payments. But some experts say a last-minute fix that would enable insurance companies to seek payment from the government for these costs may not be the Hail Mary intended by the Obama administration. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has not yet completed the back-end technology necessary to automatically transfer payment from the government to insurance providers for subsidized plans. Until this aspect of the website is fixed, the...

Gov. Chris Christie’s “bizarre behavior’’ in refusing to say he’ll support a possible GOP challenger to Gov. Cuomo next year could derail his chances to become president, state and national GOP insiders have told The Post.

Firebrand Congressman Alan Grayson hailed Black Friday civil disobedience in an afternoon interview, saying the protests by Wal-Mart workers and supporters show “the dissatisfaction of the middle class” since the 2008 financial crash “coming to a slow boil.” “If one person falls out of the middle class, that’s sad,” Grayson told Salon. “But if millions of people fall out of the middle class, that creates a backlash which is being seen all over the country, and will potentially create a new political movement of the disenfranchised.” Members of the union-backed workers’ group OUR Walmart promised 1,500 protests today, including nine...

Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter said that while most Americans were dining on their Thanksgiving turkey, the Obama administration was cooking up a regulatory stew of its own.“While most of America was enjoying their turkey and stuffing, the administration was stuffing our economy with burdensome and expensive regulations,” Vitter said.Last week, the Obama administration revealed its Unified Regulatory Agenda for the fall of 2013. It included 134 pending regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency alone. The EPA is working to finalize rules to limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, lower sulfur emissions from fuels, set ambient air quality standards,...

“Historians and pundits always say that the first real decision a governor makes is the one of running mate,” Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald, Ohio Democrats’ likely nominee for governor next year, wrote to supporters when he announced he had chosen state Sen. Eric Kearney (D) as his running mate. FitzGerald may be starting to wish voters weren’t paying attention to his first gubernatorial decision. That’s because, in the two weeks since joining the ticket, Kearney has been under almost constant barrage for owing back taxes to the Internal Revenue Service. And the campaign’s response to the revelations about their...

In a speech at TheArc arts school in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, President Barack Obama touted the free birth control for “100 million Americans” that is already being provided through the Affordable Care Act.“In the three years since we passed this law, the share of Americans with insurance is up, the growth of health care costs are down to their slowest rate in 50 years,” Obama said at an event hosted by the liberal Center for American Progress. “More people have insurance, and more have new benefits and protections – 100 million Americans who have gained the right for free preventive...

Economic inequality and poverty have grown for the last few decades. The solution? Even more federal spending, more federal regulations, more poor immigrants and more progressive government, President Barack Obama told supporters on Wednesday.“That’s our generation’s task, to rebuild America’s economic and civic foundation to continue the expansion of opportunity for this generation and the next generation,” said Obama, whose poll ratings have fallen under 40 percent, amid low growth, high unemployment, growing public distrust and increasing worry about his Obamacare overhaul.Obama’s presentation sounded unchanged from 2008, and he didn’t acknowledge that he and his allies have controlled the agenda...

President Obama on Wednesday compared the challenges of health care reform to the civil rights movement as he urged young people to do “whatever they can” to help boost enrollment in Obamacare.In an address to a youth summit hosted at the White House, Obama urged young supporters to not get “discouraged” amid the health care law's rocky rollout and with polls showing declining support for the president's signature achievement.“Stuff that's worth it is always hard. The civil rights movement was hard. Getting women the right to vote, that was hard. Making sure that workers had the right to organize, that...

When Edward Snowden unleashed the flood of classified documents and surveillance data secreted from U.S. spy agencies earlier this year, it is unclear if he anticipated the high-level damage it would do to U.S. international relations. (snip) Yet for all the ruckus globally, the most enduring damage from omnipresent surveillance may be right here at home. Early evidence suggests that knowing that our e-mails, phone calls and social media circles are being vacuumed up into a giant government database may reshape what we say and write, and whom we associate with. Invasion of privacy or no big deal? Yet while...

There was an awkward moment at today's House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Obamacare when a New York Democrat rapped GOP critics with quotes from a satirical New Yorker feature, The Borowitz Report.Rep. Carolyn Maloney, while calling it her own “distinguished comedic think tank,” quoted from several stories in the Borowitz satire blog as if they were accurate, most notably one in which author Andy Borowitz joked that Republicans are complaining that the problem-plagued Obamacare website is working too fast.She later called the blog a “distinguished report.” Maloney said, “The distinguished report went on to criticize some of...

Yasser Arafat was not the victim of poisoning, French forensic tests concluded on Tuesday, countering the theory put forward by a Swiss report on the 2004 death of the Palestinian leader. The French conclusions were immediately challenged by his widow Suha Arafat, who has argued the death was a political assassination by someone close to her husband. A senior Palestinian official dismissed the report as "politicized". [....] Swiss forensic experts stirred controversy last month by announcing that results from their tests of samples taken from Arafat's body were consistent with polonium poisoning, while not absolute proof of the cause of...

<p>HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Recordings of several 911 calls made from inside Sandy Hook Elementary during last year's school shooting are being released under court order Wednesday after a legal fight by The Associated Press.</p> <p>The AP has been asking for an opportunity to review the tapes, which will now be released Wednesday to the news cooperative in addition to other media organizations.</p>

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"....................Last year an anti-public housing slate of candidates won election to dominate the City Council, leading to a confrontation with federal and state officials that resulted in badly needed federal disaster funds being withheld from the city. The city relented and the issue appeared to be resolved. The Galveston Open Government Project said it filed the lawsuit because it failed over the last two years to persuade the City Council and the Housing Authority to halt efforts to rebuild public housing. The lawsuit filed by the Open Government Project and three former public housing residents accuses federal, city and state...

Yesterday was a red letter day--or perhaps it should be called an Islamic green letter one--for U.S. intelligence. For the first time I can recall, the top legislator on a congressional oversight committee actually made clear what motivates our enemies in what used to be called euphemistically the “War on Terror,” ... What makes this incontrovertible statement so noteworthy? It is the fact that the intelligence community is not allowed to say it. Under Obama administration guidelines, for intelligence officers–and for that matter, law enforcement, Homeland Security and military personnel–to talk about Islamic jihadism and shariah as the motivation for...

Facing pressure to combat drug use and sexual assault at the Air Force Academy, the Air Force has created a secret system of cadet informants to hunt for misconduct among students. Cadets who attend the publicly-funded academy near Colorado Springs must pledge never to lie. But the program pushes some to do just that: Informants are told to deceive classmates, professors and commanders while snapping photos, wearing recording devices and filing secret reports. For one former academy student, becoming a covert government operative meant not only betraying the values he vowed to uphold, it meant being thrown out of the...

<p>Sen. Bernard Sanders, an independent who describes himself as a democratic socialist, said to his Vermont constituency in a local newspaper article that the time might be right for him to make a run for the White House.</p> <p>He said that America has turned to the point where wealth discrepancies are fueling anger — and he thinks his socialist policies could prove the answer the nation needs, Breitbart reported. Specifically, Mr. Sanders said there’s a “sense of urgency” that America needs to come to grips with, and it’s rooted in the fact that political leaders maintain an “obscene level of wealth inequality” over those they govern.</p>