Category Archives: National

Rep. Michaud Condemns Use of Veterans as Political Pawns

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WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Representative Mike Michaud (ME-02), Ranking Member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, spoke on the House floor today during debate on H.J.Res. 72, a bill that partially funds VA operations and furthers the standoff over the government shutdown. Michaud has previously spoken out against piecemeal approaches pursued by Republican leaders.

“This House bill, like the others before them, will not be considered by the Senate and the President has said he will veto it. Instead of waging a PR war and wasting time on bills that will go nowhere, House Republicans should pursue a solution to the shutdown that could actually pass both chambers and be signed by the President,” said Michaud.

Read more at Veterans Today

Police: Soldier fatally stabbed; may be hate crime

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LAKEWOOD, Wash. – A Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldier was stabbed to death in a parking lot at the 12500 block of Pacific Highway Southwest around 2:30 a.m., officials say.

20-year-old Tevin Geike was walking with two other white soldiers along Pacific Highway SW when a group of black men drove by and shouted a racial comment toward the soldiers, the Lakewood Police Department said.

“One of the soldiers yelled back something about the suspects treating combat soldiers with disrespect,” Lt. Chris Lawler said.

The car turned around and the men confronted the soldiers, according to reports. As the verbal confrontation ensued, the driver of the vehicle realized the men were actually combat veterans and called his friends off. While the men headed back to their vehicle, one of the suspects appeared to have bumped into Geike, witnesses say.

Read more and see video at KOMO News

Patricia Blair Dies at 80; Starred in Television’s ‘Daniel Boone’

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p-blair

Patricia Blair and Edward Mulhare in Empire of the Lost.

Patricia Blair, an actress who played resourceful women in 1960s television westerns like “Daniel Boone” and “The Rifleman,” died on Sept. 9 at her home in North Wildwood, N.J. She was 80.

The cause was breast cancer, Amber Hennessey, a friend and neighbor, said.

Standing 5 feet 9 inches tall, Ms. Blair could fit in the same frame as lanky co-stars like Fess Parker, who played Daniel Boone, and Chuck Connors, the star of “The Rifleman.” She played the hotel owner Lou Mallory on “The Rifleman” starting in 1962 and Rebecca Boone, Daniel’s wife, in the six-year run of “Daniel Boone” on NBC beginning in 1964.

Read more at New York Times

AMAC supports democrat elder abuse protection bill

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The Association of Mature American Citizens organization issued a letter of support to Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-PA) for his bill, H.R. 3090, the Elder Protection and Abuse Prevention Act of 2013. Arizona democrats Ron Barber and Raul Grijalva—of Arizona’s 2nd and 3rd districts respectively—are among 43 co-sponsors of the bill.

Andrew Mangione, on the AMAC web site, wrote, “This piece of legislation sheds light on elder abuse and institutes a number of legal protective measures to ensure that incidents of abuse are properly reported and reduced nationwide. To put an end to these injustices, H.R. 3090 strengthens the definitions of elder abuse, neglect, and elder justice and defines the terms financial exploitation and adult protective services for the first time in the Older Americans Act (OAA) of 1965.”

H.R. 3090 seeks to strengthen the definitions of abuse in Title 42, The Public Health and Welfare, section of the United States Code. It also provides funding for various government and private agencies in the area of elder abuse neglect and financial exploitation.

AMAC is a conservative alternate group to AARP.

The Shocking Ingredients In Beer

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I have to confess, I’m not a beer drinker, but there’s someone in my household that loves it, so I had to figure out the truth. Is beer really healthy? Why are the ingredients not listed on the label? Which brands can we trust? Which brands are trying to slowly poison us with cheap and harmful ingredients? All of these questions were going through my head at once at lightning speed. So a year ago, I started to research what was really in beer and after questioning several beer companies, reading books about food science, and talking to experts, the information I discovered was downright shocking.

I see it all the time. Someone who eats organic, makes the right choices at the grocery store, is fit and lives an extraordinarily healthy lifestyle but then drinks beer like it is going out of style.

Caring about what you eat doesn’t necessarily translate into caring about what you drink and this is a HUGE MISTAKE.

Before we get into what exactly is in beer that you should be worried about, let’s talk about how body reacts to alcohol in general.

Read more by the Food Babe

U.S. Forest Service bans exploding targets

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Seven fires in Rocky Mountains blamed on devices

DENVER – The U.S. Forest Service announced a ban on exploding targets Monday, citing them as a major cause of wildfires.

Shooters who use exploding targets have ignited 16 wildfires since last year, including seven in the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain region of Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota.

The ban extends to all national forests and grasslands in those five states.

The public should understand that exploding targets can cause fires, said John Walsh, the U.S. Attorney for Colorado.

“You don’t want to have on your conscience starting a huge forest fire,” Walsh said.

A month before the Boston Marathon bombings, the FBI warned that commercial “exploding targets” used for recreational rifle shooting could power homemade bombs on American streets.

Read more and see video at The Durango Herald

Congress and the Justice Dept’s Dangerous Attempts to Define “Journalist” Threaten to Exclude Bloggers

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Lawmakers in Washington are again weighing in on who should and should not qualify as a journalist—and the outcome looks pretty grim for bloggers, freelancers, and other non-salaried journalists.

On July 12, the Justice Department released its new guidelines on investigations involving the news media in the wake of the fallout from the leak scandals involving the monitoring of AP and Fox News reporters. While the guidelines certainly provide much-needed protections for establishment journalists, as independent journalist Marcy Wheeler explained, the DOJ’s interpretation of who is a “member[] of the news media” is dramatically narrower than the definition provided in the Privacy Protection Act and effectively excludes bloggers and freelancers from protection. This limiting definition is causing alarm among bloggers like Glenn Reynolds on the right as well.

While the DOJ’s effort to limit the scope of who can be recognized as a journalist is problematic, it doesn’t have teeth. Guidelines are, well, guidelines. But the report is part of a broader legislative effort in Washington to simultaneously offer protection for the press while narrowing the scope of who is afforded it. Importantly, Congress introduced federal shield bills in May—both ironically named the “Free Flow of Information Act of 2013”—that arguably would exclude bloggers, freelancers, and other non-salaried journalists from protection because they are not included within the bills’ narrow definition of who qualifies as a journalist.

If these bills—support for which the White House reaffirmed in its DOJ report—pass without change, Congress effectively will create two tiers of journalists: the institutional press licensed by the government, and everyone else. That’s a pretty flimsy shield if what we are really trying to protect is the free flow of information.

Read more at the Electronic Frontier Foundation

USDA Requires Magicians To Have “Disaster Plans” For Their Rabbits

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To say that American businesses are over-regulated is a bit of an understatement. In very small print, the USDA spends 14 pages to spell out regulations specifically pertaining to rabbits and requirements that need to be met to keep one’s “rabbit license.”

A 1965 law required that labs obtain government licenses in order to use animals for testing purposes. But in 1970, that law was amended to include not just labs, but any entity that exhibits animals. Like zoos and circuses. But because the regulations written to enforce these laws are so vague and wordy like every other law and regulation we have, anything can be said to “exhibit” animals. Not just the big things like zoos.

Apparently, magicians who use rabbits as props for their tricks are not at all exempt. So, they too must obtain a license to “exhibit” their pet rabbits. And since they have to have the proper government license to do so, they must follow all the regs associated with maintaining that license. They have to pay $40 a year, give their animal regular vet care and submit to random house searches.

But now they’ve apparently got a new requirement needed in order for these magicians to hold on to their “rabbit licenses.” 54-year-old magician Marty Hahne knows about it, because he got a letter from the USDA asking him for a “disaster plan” for his rabbit, Casey. You know, like, “What does Marty the Magician plan on doing to make sure his rabbit is safe in case of a flood, a hurricane or an earthquake?” This is not a joke.

Read more at Last Resistance

Colorado town considers licensing bounty hunters to shoot down drones

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Drone season opens in Colorado using Joe Biden rules.

But if anyone accidentally shoots down a remote-controlled toy airplane, the proposed ordinance warns, “the owner of the toy remote control aerial vehicle shall be reimbursed for its full cost by the shooter.”

The tiny town of Deer Trail, Colo. — barely more than a wide spot on Interstate 70 about 55 miles east of Denver, population 546 — is considering an ordinance that would authorize licensed bounty hunters to shoot down unmanned aircraft violating its “sovereign airspace.”

A six-page petition circulated by a resident says that the threat of surveillance from drones — regardless of who is piloting them — is a threat to “traditional American ideas of Liberty and Freedom” enjoyed by Deer Trail’s “ranchers, farmers, cowboys and Indians, as well as contemporary citizens.”

Therefore, drone incursions are to be seen as acts of war.

According to the proposed ordinance, which will be considered by the town council at its next meeting on Aug. 6, prospective bounty hunters can get a one-year drone-hunting license for $25.

Proposed bounties will be $25 for those turning in the wings or fuselage of downed aircraft and $100 for mostly intact vehicles. To collect the bounty, the wreckage must have “markings, and configuration … consistent with those used by the United States federal government.”

Such “trophies” then become the property of Deer Trail.

The ordinance spells out the rules of engagement. Shooters must use shotguns, 12-gauge or smaller, firing lead, steel or depleted uranium ammunition and they can’t fire on aircraft flying higher than 1,000 (a determination made using a range finder or a best guess). No weapons with rifled barrels allowed, and no tracer rounds.

An “engagement” is limited to three shots at an aircraft every two hours. Being unable to bring down the drone within those guidelines, the petition notes, “demonstrates a lack of proficiency with the weapon.”

Read more at the Daily Caller

Want to be Unsene on the Internet?

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SAN FRANCISCO—With recent revelations about the NSA spying and knowledge that Microsoft has left “backdoors” open for the government to enter and tamper with your computers, some may have decided to switch to the more secure Linux operating system.

Linux has advantages. Better security is the main feature. Depending on the version—called “distros” in Linux lingo; short for distribution—you can set up more effective firewalls. You can get programs that alert you when certain unwanted activities are going on in your computer. Linux has less problems with viruses. This is probably due to the fact that hackers are not so much interested in Linux as they are Microsoft. Because Microsoft equals Bill Gates.

One disadvantage of Linux is that it is a bit unwieldy for most computer users. They have neither the time nor the inclination to explore yet another operating system. Some cities have Linux Users Groups that may help, but that still takes time out of their schedule. Some distros are helping, such as Ubuntu, by making more user-friendly graphic interfaces.

Another is that much hardware is only Microsoft or MAC friendly unless the company has developed an alternative driver. That you may have to find and download.

There is a new open-source start-up which is seeking funding through Indiegogo. This group, associated with Chris Kitze of Beforeitsnews, has a web email and Skype alternative called Unsene. It is currently in the Beta web version and free. It will eventually ship as a program and Android and iPhone versions are planned.

The premium service is intended to allow for more features depending on the amount donated. Eventually it will be $47 per year, but people donating now will get a lifetime version for $37.

The full security features only work with Google Chrome. Beforeitsnews explains, “The text messaging and chat work with all browsers, but the audio and video calling and the encrypted file sharing require WebRTC, a new technology that is only available on Chrome. Support for Safari, IE and Firefox is expected soon. The Chrome browser is available for free download from Google.”

This program claims military-style encryption. “The service offers a basic level of encryption (AES256) and advanced encryption (xAES up to 4096 bits) and we’ve got some additional tricks up our sleeve for extremely secure encryption.”

See Also: Stop the Spying in Your Inbox