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(CNSNews.com) – Dennis K. Burke, who as a lawyer for the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee in the 1990s was a key player behind the enactment of the 1994 assault-weapons ban, and who then went on to become Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano’s chief of staff, and contributor to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential primary campaign, and a member of Obama's transition team focusing on immigration issues, ended up in the Obama administration as the U.S. attorney in Arizona responsible for overseeing Operation Fast and Furious. When Obama nominated Burke to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona, Burke told...

The Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator who bragged about the agency’s “crucify” oil and gas producers enforcement policy is now a full-fledged activist. The Sierra Club announced Friday that former EPA Region 6 Administrator Al Armendariz will join its staff in mid-July. Armendariz resigned in April amid controversy stemming from a 2010 speech in which he analogized EPA’s enforcement policies to those of Roman crucifixions. “It was kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean,” Armendariz said. “They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and...

Charles Krauthammeer suggested that John Roberts is playing a sort of catch-up baseball since Roberts feels he needs to protect the image (among liberals, evidently) of the Supreme Court which got bad ratings (like CNN) since 2000, when the Supremes sided with W Bush over Al Gore. Maybe, Krauthammer, the psychiatrist, has gotten into the head of Roberts, but that remains to be seen. We have expected Roberts to act more honorably, as opposed to expecting Elena Kagan, who drafted Obamacare, to recuse herself from making any decision on the matter. I am convinced that most Democrats cannot experience...

Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar – one of the leaders of the congressional inquiry into Operation Fast and Furious – told The Daily Caller he hopes Attorney General Eric Holder gets the message Congress sent him by holding him in criminal and civil contempt of Congress: give up the documents. On Thursday the U.S. House of Representatives voted on a bipartisan basis to hold Holder in both criminal and civil contempt of Congress. Despite shrieks of partisan motivations from some Democratic leaders, more Democrats voted in favor of holding Holder in contempt than Republicans voted for President Barack Obama’s health...

Explosive reports are now surfacing that Justice Department officials clearly knew about the Fast and Furious “gunwalking” tactic, in which the federal government — actually, a task force comprised of Justice Department agencies and led by ATF, a Justice Department agency — allowed upwards of 1400 illegally purchased firearms to be routed to violent Mexican drug gangs. This recklessness led, quite foreseeably, to the murder of at least one federal agent, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, and probably a second, Homeland Security Agent Jaime Zapata. There are reportedly also scores of victims in Mexico. The reports, including this one from...

“Before he started making movies, Stanley Kubrick was a star photojournalist. In the summer of 1949, Look magazine sent him to Chicago to shoot pictures for a story called “Chicago City of Contrasts.” - Chicago Tribune

China’s Shenzhou 9 spacecraft thudded to earth in Inner Mongolia on Friday, capping a two-week space mission that has transfixed the world’s most populous nation and put the first Chinese female astronaut into space. Chinese leaders applauded the mission, which tested space docking procedures that are crucial steps toward China’s goal of creating a manned station by 2020.

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A NASA-sponsored researcher at the University of Iowa has developed a way for spacecraft to hunt down hidden magnetic portals in the vicinity of Earth. These portals link the magnetic field of our planet to that of the sun. Excellent video on the science of our magnetosphere and how we are just learning about field reversal that open and close between earth and the sun.

After sharing in-depth research and the perspective of Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) on the controversial — and painful — topic of reparations, NewsOne readers processed that information in a survey that asked tough, pointed questions on the subject that has long haunted Black America. To conclude our series, we asked for the invaluable expert opinion of Dr. Ivory Toldson, associate professor at Howard University School of Education, senior research analyst for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, and the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Negro Education, and Attorney Kia Baldwin Richardson, a criminal lawyer practicing in Louisiana. Their perspectives on reparations...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Look, if the chief justice of the Supreme Court is gonna say that it's his job to find every way possible to make sure that the act remains constitutional as opposed to throwing it out, then you got to do that. You've got to find the act constitutional. You've got to do whatever you can to make sure the act is sustained or survives. Well, let me translate that for you. What that means is it is now the self-appointed role of the Supreme Court to find ways to uphold unconstitutional laws and regulations. In which case,...

The bishops released a statement a short time ago: Today the United States Supreme Court issued a decision upholding as a tax the provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that requires individuals to purchase a health plan—the so-called “individual mandate.” For nearly a century, the Catholic bishops of the United States have been and continue to be consistent advocates for comprehensive health care reform to ensure access to life-affirming health care for all, especially the poorest and the most vulnerable. Although the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) did not participate in these cases and took no position...

A flurry of solar activity in early March dumped enough heat in Earth's upper atmosphere to power every residence in New York City for two years. The heat has since dissipated, but there's more to come as the solar cycle intensifies. At 2:16 minutes into the video it very clearly says that the CO2 is one of the most efficient coolants in the atmosphere and that it reflected 95% of the radiation back into outer space. This entire series of videos is excellent.

The University of California - Berkeley Police Department (UCPD) has acquired a $200,000 grant from the Department of Homeland Security to purchase an "Armored Response Counter Attack Truck," a police department spokesman told Campus Reform on Friday. The eight-ton vehicle, commonly referred to as a "Bearcat," is used by U.S. troops on the battlefield and is often equipped with a rotating roof hatch, powered turrets, gun ports, a battering ram, and a weapon system used to remotely engage a target with lethal force. Lt. Eric Tejada, a spokesman for UCPD, said the university plans to use the vehicle along with...

What might Catholics think about the Supreme Court’s narrow vindication of the basic features of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)? Like many Catholic progressives, I shouted out two big cheers. But, I can’t quite yet raise that loud third cheer. The court’s decision wonderfully affirms the act’s basic provisions. And those provisions can get America close to the dream that the institutional Catholic Church has long promoted —government-assured, universal health care for all. So, two boisterous Catholic cheers! Why not a third cheer? Because despite nearly a year’s hard efforts, faith-based groups and the Obama administration have not been able...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: If you gotta go into all kinds of contortions, if you got to go outside the bounds of the law to save the act, and that's what the New York Times quotes Justice Roberts saying. Justice Roberts suggested that even he didn't find the tax argument especially plausible, but he quoted Justice Holmes to explain why it was good enough. "As between two possible interpretations of a statute, by one of which it would be unconstitutional and by the other valid," Justice Holmes wrote, that would be Oliver Wendell, "our plain duty is to adopt that which...

Clooney to raise money for Obama in GenevaPublished June 29, 2012 Associated Press Actor George Clooney is offering more help to President Obama's re-election campaign by headlining a European fundraiser this summer for Americans living abroad. An invitation posted on Obama's campaign website says Clooney will be the special guest at an Obama fundraiser in Geneva, Switzerland, on Aug. 27. Tickets start at $1,000 per person, and dinner for two costs a cool $30,000.

(Washington, D.C., 6/29/12) A giddy Nancy Pelosi today heaped praise upon the Supreme Court ruling that now allows the Federal Government to not only tax what Americans do, but also what they don't do. Her joy at this ruling was evident in the statement she released early this morning: "In the past, Congress has had to power to tax Americans on only what they've done. We now have the power to tax what they don't do. Imagine the possibilities. If you don't buy healthy fruits and vegetables at the supermarket we want you to buy, we can tax that. If...

THE SUPREME COURT’S 5 to 4 decision upholding the core of the Affordable Care Act is good news for the court and the country. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was statesmanlike in choosing to side with four more liberal justices in finding that the law’s most controversial provision, the mandate that individuals obtain health insurance, was a constitutional exercise of Congress’s power “to lay and collect taxes.” That solution allows the main provisions of the law to take effect. Even more important, it is respectful, as the court should be, of congressional authority and the democratic process that underlies...

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act did not originate in the House. The bill that did originate in the House, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, did not contain any mandate fining (or "taxing," as the will now refer to it in Washington,) for failure to have health insurance. That was Constitutionally acceptable during the period when fines for what someone has not done were still fines, and had not been converted into taxes by having the Supreme Court amend the Constitution sua sponte. But as a tax, the mandate converts the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act...