Articles Posted by Second Amendment First
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The new president of the largest teachers union in the country will become the voice of roughly 3 million teachers at perhaps the most critical moment in the National Education Association’s history. First item on the agenda: Win back the public. Union watchers say the newly elected Lily Eskelsen García — a former school cafeteria worker teacher, folk singer and Utah teacher of the year — has a “hell of a job” ahead of her. She faces court cases challenging teacher tenure and job protections, the defection of historically loyal Democrats, growing apprehension over the Common Core, diminishing ranks, public...
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But his plea for hope contained some cynicism of its own. On the shore of the placid Lake Harriet Friday, President Barack Obama looked like he wanted to stick around. Most comfortable in campaign mode, outside the White House bubble he resents, far from congressional obstruction and close to the voters who once adored him, Obama tried to rekindle the campaign spirit. Obama had traveled to the heartland for ice cream and speechifying, with his poll numbers in the dumps and his governing agenda even more troubled. It was a blast from the past. “Cynicism is a choice, and hope...
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Fox News host Megyn Kelly had a heated interview with former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers about his past actions as part of the radical group. “You sound like — with respect — Osama bin Laden,” Kelly said to Ayers, cutting him off as he tried to justify the Weather Underground’s violent actions by pointing out what he said was violence committed by the government. Kelly grilled Ayers, who rose to national prominence during the 2008 presidential campaign when questions arose about his contact with Barack Obama, on the activities she linked to the Weather Underground during the 1960s and...
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How well will a Massachusetts liberal fit in among Southern blue-collar Democrats? That question will be answered over the next couple of weeks, when Elizabeth Warren goes to West Virginia to stump for Natalie Tennant, who is seeking to replace retiring Sen. Jay Rockefeller in a hotly contested race in coal country against Republican Rep. Shelley Moore Capito. On July 14, Warren will head to the Eastern Panhandle, as Tennant, who is currently secretary of state, rolls out her education plan. Warren also plans to appear in Kentucky later this month with Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democratic nominee for Senate....
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U.S. diplomatic facilities abroad may be at risk because of problems with their security standards and practices, according to a report this week from federal auditors. The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan investigative wing of Congress, found inconsistency in the way the State Department prepares for evolving threats and the potential dangers to temporary facilities that operate longer than anticipated. The report sheds additional light on the failures that led to a 2012 assault on a temporary diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya that killed four Americans, including U.S. ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. It could also provide more ammunition for Republicans...
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Johnnie M. Walters, a commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service under President Richard M. Nixon who left office after refusing to prosecute people on Nixon’s notorious “enemies list,” died on Tuesday at his home in Greenville, S.C. He was 94. His son Hilton confirmed the death. Nixon had fired his first I.R.S. commissioner, Randolph W. Thrower, for resisting White House pressure to punish political opponents. Mr. Thrower, who served from 1969 to 1971, died at 100 in March. Mr. Walters represented the Middle American values Nixon trumpeted. As a sharecropper’s son, he followed a mule with a plow as a...
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Did you see what President Obama said about federal employees at a town hall meeting Minneapolis on Thursday? The last question he took was from Katie Peterson, who works for the Defense Contract Management Agency. “My co-worker here and friend, we’ve been working for the federal government for almost 29 years. And we feel really privileged that we’ve been able to serve that way,” she began. “It’s been a great career, we love it, but lately, as you know, there’s been a few rough patches with three years of pay freeze and sequestration and furloughs. And we’re just kind of...
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Lois Lerner has no records of two years of missing emails and Republican claims that she’s hiding something are “silly,” her lawyer said in his first interview since the controversy around the former IRS official erupted two weeks ago. “She doesn’t know what happened,” lawyer William Taylor III said of the 2011 computer crash that erased two years worth of Lerner’s correspondence. “It’s a little brazen to think she did this on purpose.” The IRS two weeks ago told congressional investigators probing the tea party targeting that the former head of the tax-exempt division’s emails from 2009 through mid-2011 were...
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* In the United States today, the names Apache, Comanche, Chinook, Lakota, Cheyenne and Kiowa apply not only to Indian tribes but also to military helicopters. Add in the Black Hawk, named for a leader of the Sauk tribe. Then there is the Tomahawk, a low-altitude missile, and a drone named for an Indian chief, Gray Eagle. Operation Geronimo was the end of Osama bin Laden. Why do we name our battles and weapons after people we have vanquished? For the same reason the Washington team is the Redskins and my hometown Red Sox go to Cleveland to play the...
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EVER since the French banned conspicuous religious symbols from state schools in 2004, the country has grappled with striking the right balance between religious freedom and enforcement of its strict secular rules. On June 25th the scales tilted again after a landmark ruling by the top appeals court that a private day-care firm was within its rights when it fired a woman for wearing a Muslim headscarf. In 2008 Fatima Afif was sacked from her job at Baby-loup, a private nursery in the western suburbs of Paris, for wearing an Islamic head-covering. She took her case to court, claiming discrimination...
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Last week, news emerged that a Greenpeace employee had lost millions in donor money through ill-conceived currency deals. Now the environmentalists are in danger of losing their biggest asset: their credibility. On the day the scandal hit newspaper headlines, Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo didn't panic. A South African with Indian roots who grew up in a township under the Apartheid regime, a couple million missing euros was far from the worst Naidoo had seen. Instead of tearing out his hair, Naidoo twittered cheerfully about a lecture he was giving on the dispersal of power. He wished other climate...
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The two-year attempt to push immigration reform through Congress is effectively dead and unlikely to be revived until after President Obama leaves office, numerous lawmakers and advocates on both sides of the issue said this week. The slow collapse of hopes for new border legislation — which has unraveled in recent months amid persistent opposition from House Republicans — marks the end of an effort that both Democrats and Republicans have characterized as central to the future of their parties. The failure leaves some 12 million illegal immigrants in continuing limbo over their status and is certain to increase political...
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<p>In a major statement on privacy rights in the digital age, the Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously ruled that the police need warrants to search the cellphones of people they arrest.</p>
<p>Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the court, said the vast amount of data contained on modern cellphones must be protected from routine inspection.</p>
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Noted management expert and Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen was apparently called out of retirement — like the Ted Williams of evasive, unapologetic bureaucrats — to destroy what is left of his agency’s credibility. At immediate issue is two years of subpoenaed e-mails from former IRS official Lois Lerner to outside agencies, lost in a convenient computer crash. The possible involvement of other agencies is one focus of a congressional investigation into the heightened IRS scrutiny of conservative nonprofit groups before the 2012 election. In recent congressional testimony, Koskinen admitted that the e-mails were irretrievably gone; that the “backup...
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Dissatisfaction with President Obama’s conduct of foreign policy has shot up among both Republicans and Democrats in the past month, even though a slim majority supports his recent decision to send military advisers to Iraq to confront the growing threat from militants there, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. The survey suggests that most Americans back some of Mr. Obama’s approaches to the crisis in Iraq, including majority support for the possibility of drone strikes. But the poll documents an increasing lack of faith in the president and his leadership, and shows deep concern that further intervention...
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Here is a truth so fundamental that it should be self-evident: When legitimately constituted state authority stands down in the face of armed threats, the very foundation of the republic is in danger. And yet that is exactly what happened at Cliven Bundy’s Nevada ranch this spring: An alleged criminal defeated the cops, because the forces of lawlessness came at them with guns — then Bureau of Land Management officials further surrendered by removing the government markings from their vehicles to prevent violence against them. What should be judged a watershed in American history instead became a story about one...
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The welding code and construction contract for the suspension-span roadway of the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge each contain a universal rule: “No cracks.” That rule applies to any new steel bridge and is particularly important for a “fracture-critical” bridge such as the new span, which opened last fall. Fracture-critical bridges can break, because some of their parts lack redundancy or backup. If a weld crack grows larger, causing such a part to fail, all or part of the roadway could collapse. In 2008, the no-cracks rule put the California Department of Transportation in a worrisome bind. The Chinese firm...
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Inside a two-bedroom beachside apartment, Elliot Rodger began his Santa Barbara rampage last month by mutilating his two roommates and their friend. The scene, police said, was horrific. But there were few signs of a struggle, according to the victimsÂ’ parents. There was no blood on the walls or ceiling, and the confrontation between Rodger and the three other young men seemed to have been confined to a small space, the parents said based on a visit to the crime scene. They said evidence taken from the apartment makes them think that Rodger may have used a machete, knives and...
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Here’s a too-familiar story from Texas: A 70-year-old man claims he was severely beaten by a pair of cops after he stopped on a Texas road because he fell into diabetic shock. Thomas Mathieu said he only remembers pulling over in a turning lane in San Antonio before the Jan. 13 scuffle with police that put him in a hospital with three broken ribs and several cuts and bruises to his body. “None of it adds up, because I am basically a gentle person,” he told WOAI-TV. “Why in the world would they do this?” A video of the encounter...
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Making gun lovers happy, Kansas lawmakers decided Thursday that citizens can bring their weapons into the Kansas Capitol starting July 1. One question: What are they going to shoot? The idiocy of the pro-gun movement leads to the conclusion that people have to be armed to the teeth these days to walk anywhere, including in the Capitol in Topeka. Really? Kansas lawmakers said that they are going to let people who have licenses to carry hidden weapons to bring them into the Capitol. That will be in addition to the legislators and state employees who already can do that. This...
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