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The Z-Ro Retinal Obfuscation weapon mounted to a handgun. Last summer’s riots in Ferguson, Missouri, prompted much talk by President Obama and certain members of Congress about the need to demilitarize local police forces. Nearly a year later, the opposite is happening. New and more powerful weapons are flowing into local police departments daily, and still others are new to the marketplace. One weapon about to make its debut is the “Z-Ro Retinal Obfuscation” gun. When fired, the gun allows an officer to temporarily blind his targeted subject for up to 15 minutes. The new “compliance weapon” made a...

"What's a gyrocopter?" quote of the day.

Bad news today for HBO, which is attempting to marry the recent debut of their HBO Now streaming service with season 5 of Game of Thrones. As of last night, the first four episodes of the new season, nearly half of the ten total episodes, have been leaked online to various torrent sites. After appearing online yesterday afternoon, the episodes have already been downloaded almost 800,000 times, and that figure will likely blow past a million downloalds by the season 5 premier tonight.

A surge of book sales that pushed the US Constitution into the top ten best seller list of the Conservative Book Club has caused federal officials to put the Department of Homeland Security on "full alert." "This is just the type of abnormal behavior that should trigger a high state of vigilance," Secretary Jeh Johnson declared. "We expect a few loud-mouthed right-wing politicians to repeatedly harp on whether some action taken by the government is constitutional. But we can't afford to overlook tens of thousands of ordinary citizens reading such seditious literature." "Outside of some historical interest, we can see...

"An inspector general called them courageous, but Sen. Harry Reid said Friday that the government whistleblowers who accused him of using political pressure to try to win special treatment for a Las Vegas casino were “a bunch of whiners.” ........[Homeland Security Inspector General John] Roth said the special treatment was brought to his attention by more than 15 whistleblowers — an extraordinary number, in Mr. Roth’s judgment — who believed Mr. Mayorkas was caving to political pressure. “That so many individuals were willing to step forward and tell us what happened is evidence of deep resentment about Mr. Mayorkas‘ actions...

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson declared Monday that “reading the Quran” reminds him of “quintessential American values.” The Muslim Brotherhood-aligned influence operation he addressed was pleased. The rest of us should be alarmed. There are, of course, passages of the Koran that are peaceable and encourage tolerance. Presumably, those are the ones to which Mr. Johnson was referring. Unfortunately, according to the authorities of Islam and their supremacist doctrine of shariah, such passages have been explicitly replaced by others that are virulently hateful and intolerant. They demand adherents engage in holy war, not practice true American values. Mr. Johnson is...

"The long-anticipated report found no evidence of law-breaking. But members of the department’s staff perceived Mayorkas’s actions as “politically motivated,” and the report concluded that he had 'created an appearance of favoritism and special access.'"

Politics and Policy Senator Reid Scores Early Victory as Opposition Leader But minority leader warns fellow Democrats against taking victory laps after homeland security win By Siobhan Hughes and Michael R. Crittenden WASHINGTON—Senate Democrats think they have had a good couple of weeks, including a win in a battle over immigration and homeland security funding, but their leader is warning members of his caucus against taking any victory laps. “We cannot be gloating,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) said he told his caucus at a closed-door meeting on Tuesday. “We have a lot of things we have to...

When a black homeless man was shot dead by police on Skid Row on Sunday, the shooting was seen as yet another example of white policemen in the United States being too quick to reach for their guns. But the full story behind the man's death – and his remarkable life – has emerged as something far more complex. The 39-year-old identified by police after his death as Charley Saturmin Robinet was actually using a fake identity, stolen from a Frenchman, to try and make a career in Hollywood.

So House Republicans have accepted the inevitable and passed a clean bill funding the Department of Homeland Security. We always knew how this would play out. The media, congressional Democrats, and President Obama deluged us with tales of impending disaster, as if ISIS were about to wade ashore in Miami, despite the fact that, according DHS’s contingency plan, 86 percent of the department’s workers would be exempt from any furlough, including virtually all employees at key security agencies like customs and border protection, the Coast Guard, and the Secret Service. On the other hand, the Republicans really had no end-game....

Washington (CNN)The Department of Homeland Security moved closer to running out of money Friday after the House rejected a bill that would have kept the agency open for three more weeks. Unless another deal is reached by midnight, DHS will fall into a partial shutdown, leaving thousands of workers furloughed while forcing others to show up on the job without being paid. The House vote was a shocking twist to a dramatic day on Capitol Hill. For most of the day, lawmakers seemed poised to avoid a partial shutdown. The House cleared a procedural hurdle earlier in the day, indicating...

Ken Cuccinelli Senate Conservatives Fund President Ken Cuccinelli calls Senate Republicans’ decision to push Homeland Security funding that includes money for President Obama’s amnesty a “total surrender” that proves GOP leaders “really don’t have any backbone.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., decided earlier in the week to stop pushing a Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, appropriations bill that strictly forbids funding for Obama administration executive action on immigration in 2012 and 2014. With Democrats blocking debate, McConnell agreed to bring a “clean” bill forward in exchange for Democrat promises to vote on a separate bill to defund...

ecurity: A video by Somalia's al-Qaida-affiliated al-Shabab group warns Minnesota's Mall of America may be a repeat of a 2013 mall attack in Kenya. The Second Amendment may be our best defense against terrorism. The immense Mall of America in Bloomington would indeed make an inviting target for jihadists intent on martyrdom. Its 520 stores, the most of any mall in the world, attracts 40 million people annually and is a global tourist destination. It's as inviting a target and as much of an iconic symbol of Western capitalism and culture as was the World Trade Center on Sept. 11,...

Al-Shabab terrorist on propaganda video seeking to inspire lone-wolf attacks on malls, including the Mall of America in Minnesota. Homeland Security Chief Jeh Johnson warned that a Somalia-based terrorist group is encouraging “independent actors” to carry out attacks in Western countries, with the Mall of America in Minnesota among the specific targets, but he failed to mention that the U.S. continues to import hundreds of high-risk Islamic refugees from Somalia every month. The U.S. State Department’s refugee-resettlement program has placed more than 100,000 Somalis into U.S cities and towns since the early 1990s – all of them Muslims hand-selected...

WASHINGTON — The Republican-led Congress returns to town Monday with no viable plan to avert a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security less than five days away on Friday. The GOP is caught between wanting to use DHS funding to block to President Barack Obama's executive actions to shield upwards of 4 million people from deportation and give them 3-year work permits, and not wanting to be held responsible for shutting down the department. In a testament to the party's struggles, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has teed up a procedural vote Monday afternoon on the same bill...

Days after a federal judge issued an injunction against President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) urged Senate Republicans to abandon their defunding efforts and pass a clean Homeland Security funding bill. “We have to fund Homeland Security,” Rubio reportedly said on Wednesday, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “We can’t let Homeland Security shut down.” He reportedly “noted that Obama has threatened to veto any bill that would reverse his executive actions on immigration, including the measure to pay for Homeland Security” and “the Senate doesn’t have enough votes to pass the bill that ties the two...

Top U.S. counterterrorism officials say they worry a potential terrorist could be hiding among refugees who are looking to come to the United States after escaping the brutal war in Syria. "It's clearly a population of concern,” the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Nicholas Rasmussen, told the House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday. Committee Chairman Mike McCaul, R-Texas, went further, saying it would be a “huge mistake” to bring refugees from the conflict to the U.S. – even as an estimated 4 million children, women and men have been forced to flee Syria and another 7 million have been...

* Alvin 'A.T.' Smith ran day-to-day operations at the Secret Service while it was dragged through scandal after scandal * He resigned this week but landed a job at DHS with an investigative unit inside Immigration and Customs Enforcement * The Obama administration won't say what Smith's new title is or what his duties will be, but his transfer instead of dismissal would have been approved at the highest levels(continued)

There are individuals living in the United States today who have contact with the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) and other terrorist groups who have "a desire to conduct an attack" on U.S. soil, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union." Johnson would not say how many such individuals the government is aware of, but did say the number is dwarfed by the number of people in Europe intent on carrying out out acts of terror there. And the ability to recruit and communicate through social media has only strengthened the ability to inspire...

President Barack Obama claimed on Monday that without a comprehensive budget covering the Department of Homeland Security, more than 130,000 mission-critical employees will be forced to work without pay by the end of the month. They include 40,000 employed by Customs and Border Protection, 50,000 Transportation Security Administration screeners, 13,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and 40,000 Coast Guard personnel. Pay would be restored at the end of any withholding period. 'I know how vital you are, and I want to make sure more Americans know how vital you are,' Obama told an auditorium full of DHS employees Monday the...