SpaceshipTwo Explodes, Crashes in Virgin Galactic Test Flight, At Least 1 Dead
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo crashes in Mojave Desert
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control on Thursday yanked a poster off its Web site explaining how Ebola can be spread by contaminated droplets — from a sneeze for example — a day after The Post reported on the frightening revelation.
The fact sheet was taken off line, and a link that led to it a day before now sends viewers to a different page with a different message.
“The ’What’s the difference between infections spread through air or by droplets?’ fact sheet is being updated and is currently unavailable. Please visit cdc.gov/Ebola for up-to-date information on Ebola,” it read Thursday.
Officials with the CDC remained mum on the issue, refusing to respond to questions for the original story and again on Thursday.
@AmbassadorRice
Come on, between us - did you have a straight face when you typed this?
#TruthForum
—
Chris Tsotsoros (@ctsotsoros) October
31, 2014
@stockdemons @AmbassadorRice she'll say whatever they tell her to say. No morals - she'll lie and lie
Even on Sunday. 5 shows. #Benghazi
— Wantmycountryback (@TLCr2) October 31, 2014
Chickenshit to bullshit. RT RT @AmbassadorRice: U.S.-Israel security relationship is stronger than it has ever been @Cameron_Gray
— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) October 31, 2014
@AmbassadorRice I'd give that statement 5 Pinocchio's
— Charles_S_Viar (@Charles_S_Viar) October 31, 2014
President Barack Obama is about to do what no president has done in the past 50 years: Have two horrible, terrible, awful midterm elections in a row.
In fact, Obama is likely to have the worst midterm numbers of any two-term president going back to Democrat Harry S. Truman.
Truman lost a total of 83 House seats during his two midterms (55 seats in 1946 and 28 seats in 1950), while Republican Dwight Eisenhower lost a combined 66 House seats in the 1954 and 1958 midterms.
Obama had one midterm where his party lost 63 House seats, and Democrats are expected to lose another 5 to possibly 12 House seats (or more), taking the sitting president’s total midterm House loses to the 68 seat to 75 seat range.
Most recent presidents have one disastrous midterm and another midterm that was not terrible.
The GOP lost 30 House seats in George W. Bush’s second midterm, but gained 8 seats in his first midterm for a net loss of 22 seats. The party lost 26 seats in Ronald Reagan’s first midterm, but a mere 5 seats in his second midterm for a net loss of 31 seats.
Via The NY Times:Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has faced intense scrutiny in recent months, including an investigation by federal prosecutors, over his management of a commission that he created to root out corruption in New York politics, but prevented from examining his administration’s conduct and then prematurely shut down.An analysis of Mr. Cuomo’s handling of an earlier investigative commission, which highlighted the failures of electric companies in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, reveals some of the same hallmarks: interference, efforts to shield his administration’s role and a sense that the governor had a clear idea at the outset of what the commission should conclude.His first use of the Moreland Act, which empowers governors to investigate problems and recommend solutions, focused heavily on the post-hurricane failures of the Long Island Power Authority. A state-run utility, it had a hapless history and a fed-up customer base from the Rockaways to the Hamptons.
For nearly four years, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has used his formidable political skills to achieve major advances for New York. He pressured and ultimately persuaded some Republican legislators to allow same-sex marriage in the state in 2011. That provided momentum for marriage equality nationally and changed many lives for the better. At least 30,000 same-sex couples have celebrated legal marriages in the state since the law changed.He pushed through the strongest gun-control measure in the country after the mass killing of schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., in 2012. The new law expanded the ban on automatic weapons and big ammunition magazines and requires background checks for private gun sales, changes that are an improvement to public safety. Many voters upstate have anti-Cuomo bumper stickers and lawn signs registering their anger at the gun control bill. These are badges of political courage for Mr. Cuomo.His budgets have been on time, and though his tax policies have favored the wealthy, he managed to get higher credit ratings for the state for the first time in decades.While The Times’s editorial board chose not to make an endorsement in the Democratic primary in September, we recommend Mr. Cuomo for re-election on the basis of these achievements.
This number jumped out at me from the new Washington Post/ABC News poll: It showed that, among Latinos, 50 percent say it doesn’t matter who wins the Senate come November. And among those who do think it will matter, twice as many say it would be a good thing (30 percent) if the GOP took over as say it would be a bad thing (15 percent).
This is a demographic, we will remind you, that voted 71-27 for President Obama just two years ago. And only 15 percent are concerned about a GOP-controlled Senate.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid warned in a fundraising pitch Wednesday that Republicans could try to impeach and remove President Obama from office if the GOP wins control of the Senate in next week’s elections.
“Frankly, a Republican House and Senate could go beyond shutting down the government — they could waste months of our lives on impeachment,” Mr. Reid said in a fundraising email sent by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which is an outside group whose goal is to bolster liberal Democrats.
The email appeal asks for support for three Democrats in particular: Sen. Mark Begich in Alaska, Sen. Mark Udall in Colorado, and Rep. Bruce Braley, Democrats’ nominee in Iowa.
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I am livid. Angry. Filled with rage.
A few minutes ago (as of this posting, a few hours), I lost my favorite belt buckle to the TSA at Los Angeles International Airport, because – they claimed – it was a “replica” of a gun.
What kind of a gun, you might ask?
A 1950s Flash Gordon-style RAYGUN!! A fictional weapon. A child’s toy.
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Some healthcare workers in room w/ Obama worked in #Ebola hot zones, are still in 21-day monitoring period #TheLead pic.twitter.com/IEbuW9Oaw7
— The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) October 29, 2014
Obama on early voting: "You can only vote once. This isn't Chicago, now."
— Justin Sink (@JTSTheHill) October 29, 2014
Police are investigating after a man reportedly committed suicide by jumping in front of a Long Island Rail Road train after brutally beheading a woman on Long Island Tuesday.
Sources tell PIX11 a woman was found beheaded on Secatogue Avenue in Faramingdale, near the LIRR station.
Nassau County police confirm the crime scene at Secatogue Avenue and that a person is dead on the LIRR tracks a short distance away.
Police say it is a possible suicide, but will not confirm the deaths are connected.
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(CNSNews.com) – The number of foreign-born individuals holding jobs in the United States hit a record high of 25,019,000 in September, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
The BLS has been tracking the number of foreign-born workers annually since 2005 and monthly since 2007. The BLS does not distinguish between foreign-born individuals who are in the United States legally and those who are here illegally.
“The foreign born are those who reside in the United States but who were born outside the country or one of its outlying areas to parents who were not U.S. citizens,” the BLS explains. “The foreign born include legally-admitted immigrants, refugees, temporary residents such as students and temporary workers, and undocumented immigrants. The survey data, however, do not separately identify the numbers of persons in these categories.”
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The other day I was talking to a senior Obama administration official about the foreign leader who seems to frustrate the White House and the State Department the most. “The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit,” this official said, referring to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, by his nickname.
This comment is representative of the gloves-off manner in which American and Israeli officials now talk about each other behind closed doors, and is yet another sign that relations between the Obama and Netanyahu governments have moved toward a full-blown crisis. The relationship between these two administrations— dual guarantors of the putatively “unbreakable” bond between the U.S. and Israel—is now the worst it’s ever been, and it stands to get significantly worse after the November midterm elections. By next year, the Obama administration may actually withdraw diplomatic cover for Israel at the United Nations, but even before that, both sides are expecting a showdown over Iran, should an agreement be reached about the future of its nuclear program.
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Washington (CNN) — Nearly 7 in 10 Americans are angry at the direction the country is headed and 53% of Americans disapprove of President Barack Obama’s job performance, two troubling signs for Democrats one week before the midterm elections, a new CNN/ORC International Poll shows.
Democrats are battling to try and save the Senate majority, while hoping to prevent more losses in the House, which the GOP controls by a 234 to 201 margin.
In the Senate, Republicans need a net gain of six seats, and several state polls in the past month of contested races show that Democrats are in danger of losing control of the majority, and thus Congress. Currently, Democrats control the Senate by a 55-45 margin with two of those seats held by independents that align themselves politically with Democrats.
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Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), says it’s “un-American" for President Barack Obama to consider implementing an executive amnesty for millions of illegal aliens across the country.
“It’s unconstitutional, illegal, and we don’t support it,” Priebus replied when a Tea Party activist asked him about the president’s plans for an executive amnesty on a conference call hosted by TheTeaParty.net on Monday evening.
“I don’t support it. It is wrong,” Priebus said. "It is un-American for a president to try and do such a thing. I want to make it clear: There is no part of me, there is not a molecule in my body that agrees with the president on executive amnesty.”
Priebus promised the hundreds of activists on the call that the Republican Party, if it takes the Senate on Nov. 4 in the upcoming midterm elections, will do everything in its power to stop Obama from proceeding on the executive amnesty. Priebus even boldly predicted that Republicans can and will succeed in stopping Obama if elected on Nov. 4.
The number of confirmed Ebola cases passed the 10,000 mark over the weekend, despite efforts to curb its spread.And while the disease typically dies on surfaces within hours, research has discovered it can survive for more than seven weeks under certain conditions.During tests, the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) found that the Zaire strain will live on samples stored on glass at low temperatures for as long as 50 days.The tests were initially carried out by researchers from DSTL before the current outbreak, in 2010, but the strain investigated is one of five that is still infecting people globally.The findings are also quoted in advice from the Public Agency of Health in Canada.
While he was early voting on Friday, a Douglasville, Georgia man says he was asked to remove a hat he wears everywhere, one that reads “NRA Instructor,” because poll workers said it was too closely associated with the Republican party.
Bundy Cobb, who is certified by the National Rifle Association in firearms training, wears the hat in part to promote his business, True Aim Defense. But poll workers apparently saw it as something different.
“I went by the first two ladies, and they didn’t say anything. And then the next lady, she said ‘sir, you’re going to have to take off your hat,’” Cobb recalled in an interview with The Daily Caller.
“What are you talking about?” Cobb said he replied.
Cobb, who is a veteran, says he looked down the voting line and saw another man with a hat on. “What’s the difference between his hat and mine?” Cobb asked.
That’s when workers told him that his NRA hat was perceived as being associated with the GOP and that he couldn’t wear it near the voting booth.
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The latest Wall Street Journal / NBC News poll says Republicans have soared to a mind-blowing 11 point lead, with voters saying they want a Republican-led Congress by a margin of 52-41. The generic lead for the GOP was only 5 points in the same poll last week. The Tea Party wave elections in 2010 rolled in with only a 7-point lead. It’s relatively rare for the Republicans to have a lead on this question at all, even in years when they do fairly well.
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Facing fierce resistance from the White House and medical experts to a strict new mandatory quarantine policy, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Sunday night that medical workers who had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa but did not show symptoms of the disease would be allowed to remain at home and would receive compensation for lost income.
Mr. Cuomo’s decision capped a frenzied weekend of behind-the-scenes pleas from administration officials, who urged him and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey to reconsider the mandatory quarantine they had announced on Friday. Aides to President Obama also asked other governors and mayors to follow a policy based on science, seeking to stem a steady movement toward more stringent measures in recent days at the state level.
Dr. Craig Spencer in an undated photograph.New York Ebola Patient Enters More Serious Phase of Illness, Officials SayOCT. 25, 2014
The announcement by Mr. Cuomo seemed intended to draw a sharp contrast — both in tone and in fact — to the policy’s implementation in New Jersey, where a nurse from Maine who arrived on Friday from Sierra Leone was swiftly quarantined in a tent set up inside a Newark hospital, with a portable toilet but with no shower.
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It takes about 10 minutes to walk from the Capitol to the federal courthouse just down the hill, but House Republicans haven’t managed to make that trip in the four months since they announced they’d be suing the president.
House Speaker John Boehner came out swinging hard last June when he announced that his chamber would take President Barack Obama to court. The suit, charging that the president grossly exceeded his constitutional authority by failing to implement portions of the Obamacare law, was billed as an election-season rallying point for aggrieved Republicans. But days before the midterms the House’s legal guns seem to have fallen silent.
Lawyers close to the process said they originally expected the legal challenge to be filed in September but now they don’t expect any action before the elections.
President Obama capped off another week filled with Ebola concerns by hitting the links during a sunny afternoon in Washington, just 10 days before the midterm elections.Yesterday, the Pentagon confirmed a U.S Marine died in Baghdad.
The pool report said Obama left the White House for Virginia’s Fort Belvoir golf course shortly after noon on Saturday, where he spent several hours with aides, according to reporters.
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Marcelo Marquez, the man accused to killing two sheriff’s deputies in California was in the country illegally and had been deported twice to Mexico — once in 1997, and again in 2001.
Marquez, 34, is accused of killing two sheriff’s deputies Friday during a 6-hour crime spree in northern California.
And Marcelo Marquez is not even his real name, it’s actually Luis Enrique Monroy-Bracamonte, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE filed paperwork Saturday to ensure he is turned over to immigration officials if he is ever released, though that is unlikely.
“Monroy-Bracamonte was first deported to Mexico in 1997 following his arrest and conviction in Arizona for possession of narcotics for sale; he was arrested and returned to Mexico a second time in 2001,” the Sacramento Bee reports.
Monroy-Bracamonte was booked on two counts of murder, attempted murder and carjacking under the false name he gave authorities. His wife, Janelle Marquez Monroy, 38, also faces a charge of attempted murder as well as two counts of carjacking.
The couple is held without bail and expected to make their first court appearance Tuesday.
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My phone interview with @drjudymelinek was fully on the record & transcribed. I would not have spoken to her otherwise. Quotes are accurate.
— Blythe Bernhard (@blythebernhard) October 25, 2014
@blythebernhard Then why send an e mail with completely different quotes 25 min later? http://t.co/eWbETjKS67 pic.twitter.com/XRcmep9sxl
— Judy Melinek M.D. (@drjudymelinek) October 25, 2014
While giving a get-out-the-vote speech at a Florence, South Carolina political event, Democrat gubernatorial candidate, State Senator Vincent Shaheen, told cheering fans of his opponent, sitting Republican governor Nikki Haley, "We are going to escort whore out the door."
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest additionally mocked Chairman Darrell Issa for his pronunciation of the word “Ebola” and dismissed the hearing.Obama calls Ebola "Eboli."
“I didn’t see much of it,” Earnest said to reporters during the White House Press briefing. “It does seem that most of the criticism was registered by somebody who struggled to pronounce the name of the virus at the hearing.”
Practically lost in the 1,000-plus pages of records is an index that shows Jarrett was brought in to manage the fact that Holder lied to Congress after the story about the disastrous gun-running operation broke in the media. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) ran the once-secret program that allowed guns from the U.S. to be smuggled into Mexico so they could eventually be traced to drug cartels. Instead, federal law enforcement officers lost track of hundreds of weapons which have been used in an unknown number of crimes, including the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Arizona.
The files received by JW include three electronic mails between Holder and Jarrett and one from former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke to Jarrett. The e-mails with Holder are all from October 4, 2011, a significant date because, on the evening of October 3rd, Sheryl Attkisson (then at CBS news) released documents showing that Holder had been sent a briefing paper on Operation Fast and Furious on June 5, 2010. The paper was from the director of the National Drug Intelligence Center, Michael Walther.
This directly contradicted Holder’s May 3, 2011 testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, during which he stated that he, “probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.”
In a surprise move late Friday, a key Democrat on the Federal Election Commission called for burdensome new rules on Internet-based campaigning, prompting the Republican chairman to warn that Democrats want to regulate online political sites and even news media like the Drudge Report.
Democratic FEC Vice Chair Ann M. Ravel announced plans to begin the process to win regulations on Internet-based campaigns and videos, currently free from most of the FEC’s rules. “A reexamination of the commission’s approach to the internet and other emerging technologies is long over due,” she said.
The power play followed a deadlocked 3-3 vote on whether an Ohio anti-President Obama Internet campaign featuring two videos violated FEC rules when it did not report its finances or offer a disclosure on the ads. The ads were placed for free on YouTube and were not paid advertising.
Secy of State Kerry meets with Elton John at State Dept to discuss his AIDS Foundation pic.twitter.com/iBJ1aHlDBJ
— David Forman (@dcdesker) October 24, 2014
Every year, Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn and his staff compile an exhaustive volume of wasteful government spending from that year. The 2014 tome is chock full of government waste ranging from the redundant to the downright absurd.
Here is a list of my personal worst of the worst in federal waste:
Teaching Mountain Lions to Ride a Treadmill: $856,000
The National Science Foundation shelled out nearly a million taxpayer dollars to determine if captive mountain lions could be trained to ride a treadmill. The University of California-Santa Cruz researcher even boasted about receiving the grant saying, “People just didn’t believe you could get a mountain lion on a treadmill, and it took me three years to find a facility that was willing to try.” If anyone was wondering, it took the lions all of eight months to learn.
Studying how many times “hangry” people stab a voodoo doll: $331,000
After teaching mountain lions about treadmills, the National Science Foundation also funded a study to come up with the self evident conclusion that hungry people tend to be more angry and aggressive. They tested this theory by allowing spouses to poke pins into voodoo dolls as their “hanger” grew.
“Over the course of twenty-one consecutive evenings, 107 couples were given a chance to stick up to 51 pins into a voodoo doll representing their spouse. The pin-pushing happened in secret, away from the other partner. Participants then recorded the number of pins they poked into the dolls. Those tests revealed what may already be obvious to many couples: a spouse with low blood sugar was an angrier one, and stuck more pins in the doll.”
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Those four people include Spencer’s fiancée and two friends – all of whom are healthy, but have still been quarantined, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Commissioner Dr. Mary Travis Bassett said.It appears Doctors Without Borders has very lax rules for healthcare workers returning from Ebola countries. If someone catches Ebola from Dr. Craig Spencer, are they legally liable?
The fourth person who is in contact with the state is the driver of an Uber car, which Spencer took when he went bowling Wednesday night in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Bassett said. The Uber driver had no direct contact with Spencer, and is not believed to be in any danger, she said.
Uber issued a statement indicating that it also contacted the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the city Health Department, which said the driver and subsequent passengers were not at risk.
When two burly men walked into a Missouri women's underwear store Tuesday, the owners didn't think much of it -- until the pair flashed their Homeland Security badges and confiscated several dozen panties bearing the initials "KC" in honor of the Kansas City Royals.
Danielle Meister, co-owner of Birdies Panties shop, said the undercover agents seized the lingerie, claiming the store violated copyright laws by selling underwear with "Take the Crown" and "KC" printed across the rear. Meister and her business partner, Peregrine Honig, said they wanted to celebrate the success of their hometown team -- which on Wednesday night beat the San Francisco Giants to tie the World Series at one game apiece -- by designing the panties.
Judicial Watch announced today that it received from the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) a “Vaughn index” detailing records about the Operation Fast and Furious scandal. The index was forced out of the Obama administration thanks to JW’s June 2012 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and subsequent September 2012 FOIA lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. Department of Justice (No. 1:12-cv-01510)). A federal court had ordered the production over the objections of the Obama Justice Department.
The document details the Attorney General Holder’s personal involvement in managing the Justice Department’s strategy on media and Congressional investigations into the Fast and Furious scandal. Notably, the document discloses that emails between Attorney General Holder and his wife Sharon Malone – as well as his mother – are being withheld under an extraordinary claim of executive privilege as well as a dubious claim of deliberative process privilege under the Freedom of Information Act. The “First Lady of the Justice Department” is a physician and not a government employee.
This is the first time that the Obama administration has provided a detailed listing of all records being withheld from Congress and the American people about the deadly Fast and Furious gun running scandal. The 1307-page “draft” Vaughn index was emailed to Judicial Watch at 8:34 p.m. last night, a few hours before a federal court-ordered deadline. In its cover letter, the Department of Justice asserts that all of the responsive records described in the index are “subject to the assertion of executive privilege.”
A public assistance service that feeds Ohio’s hungry families can double as currency for drug dealers who will trade almost anything for their product.
Dubious businesses and drug dealers will buy electronic benefits cards for about half the amount loaded onto the card. From there, people use the cash to buy drugs, said Eric Wolf, agent in charge with the Ohio Investigative Unit, which investigates food stamp fraud and liquor license violations.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, cannot be used to buy items such as tobacco, alcohol or drugs. The penalties can be stiff for offending businesses and their owners because food stamp fraud is a felony offense, Wolf said.
In the past five years, the food stamp program has permanently disqualified 142 stores in Ohio for food stamp fraud — nearly all were in Ohio’s largest cities. However, the U.S. Department of Agriculture does not track how many of those were related to drugs
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The toxicology test. also obtained by the newspaper and performed by a St. Louis University laboratory, revealed marijuana in Brown’s blood and urine. Alfred Staubus, a consultant in forensic toxicology at The Ohio State University College of Pharmacy, told the newspaper THC could impair judgment or slow reaction times but that there was no reliable measurement to make those conclusions.“The detection of THC in the postmortem blood of Michael Brown really indicates his recent use of marijuana (within a few hours) and that he may or may not have been impaired at the time of his death,” Staubus said.
Chris Matthews reacts to Democratic Senate candidates Michelle Nunn (D-GA) and Mark Begich (D-AK), an incumbent, dodging the question if they voted for Obama.
“That’s the way people walk past guys who are trying to get a buck or a quarter from somebody,” Matthews said describing the candidates ignoring the question from a tracker.
“It’s like Obama has Ebola,” Matthews said on Monday’s broadcast of Hardball on MSNBC. “I wasn’t near him! I didn’t touch him!”
Women have moved in the GOP's direction since September. In last month's AP-GfK poll, 47 percent of female likely voters said they favored a Democratic-controlled Congress while 40 percent wanted the Republicans to capture control. In the new poll, the two parties are about even among women, 44 percent prefer the Republicans, 42 percent the Democrats.In all, the poll finds that 55 percent of likely voters now expect Republicans to win control of the Senate, up from 47 percent last month. Democrats have grown slightly more pessimistic on this count since September, with 25 percent expecting the GOP to take control now compared with 18 percent earlier.
Pennsylvania Democrats are outraged after a bill was passed that allows gun rights groups like the NRA to sue localities for passing laws that violate state law.
Many such Democrats said a provision forcing localities that lose lawsuits to pay the legal fees of the plaintiffs is particularly objectionable.
“This is a dangerous provision that threatens municipalities’ financial stability,” Rep. Madeleine Dean (D., Montgomery) told the Philadelphia Inquirer.
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According to a letter from a lawyer for the State of North Carolina to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a speaker at a recent NAACP conference in North Carolina urged audience members to mislead the NAACP’s own members into believing they do not need to register to vote in advance, or that they do not need to vote at their assigned polling place. Why? The letter alleges: To create confusion and animosity during the upcoming mid-term elections in North Carolina, and to use the evidence of that confusion in the ongoing litigation between Eric Holder’s Justice Department and North Carolina and to show that North Carolina’s election integrity laws are discriminatory. From the letter:
It is also our understanding that during the [NAACP conference], Rev. Barber urged those in attendance to take unregistered voters to vote during the Early Voting period and to engage in get-out-the vote activities that included transporting registered voters to vote in precincts in which they are not assigned to vote on Election Day, or words to that effect. The stated purpose for these activities, as I understand it, was to gather evidence for and thereby enhance plaintiffs prospects of success in the litigation involving [North Carolina’s Election Integrity Laws].
Goats are shrinking as a result of climate change, researchers have claimed.
They say Alpine goats now weigh about 25 per cent less than animals of the same age in the 1980s.
Researchers say it is a stark indication of how quickly climate change can affect animals.
They appear to be shrinking in size as they react to changes in climate, according to new research from Durham University.
The researchers studied the impacts of changes in temperature on the body size of Alpine Chamois, a species of mountain goat, over the past 30 years.
To their surprise, they discovered that young Chamois now weigh about 25 per cent less than animals of the same age in the 1980s.
In recent years, decreases in body size have been identified in a variety of animal species, and have frequently been linked to the changing climate.
USCIS Contracting will be posting a solicitation for the requirement of Card Stock used by the USCIS Document Management Division. The objective of this procurement is to provide card consumables for the Document Management Division (DMD) that will be used to produce Permanent Resident Cards (PRC) and Employment Authorization Documentation (EAD) cards. The requirement is for an estimated 4 million cards annually with the potential to buy as many as 34 million cards total The ordering periods for this requirement shall be for a total of five (5) years. This is a Firm Fixed Price (FFP) supply purchase for commercial items, utilizing North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code 325211 and Product / Service Code (PSC) 9330. This requirement is for the acquisition of 100% polycarbonate solid body card stock with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and holographic images embedded within the card construction substrate layers, card design service, and storage.
Just a week after Sen. Kay Hagan (D., N.C.) recommended a North Carolina judge to President Barack Obama for a seat in the U.S. District Court, the judge ruled in favor of a company partially owned by Hagan’s husband.
The senator’s husband, Charles T. “Chip” Hagan, was a managing member of Hydrodyne Industries LLC when it sued a regional water authority for drawing water out of a river that had one of its hydroelectric dams built on. The lawsuit sought millions of dollars in damages and was carried out by Chip Hagan’s legal firm.
Superior Court Judge Calvin E. Murphy ruled the case in favor of Hydrodyne, setting the table for the Piedmont Triad Regional Water Authority to pay millions in damages to companies including Hydrodyne.
Murphy’s ruling was made on Oct. 23, 2009, just nine days after Sen. Hagan sent his name to Obama to be nominated for a lifetime seat on the U.S. District Court for Western North Carolina.
Hagan withdrew her recommendation to Obama after North Carolina’s News and Record contacted her office about the apparent conflict of interest, telling the paper that she “was not aware that Judge Murphy was hearing a case in which my husband had an interest.”
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#Taxes #TheSimpsons hahaha pic.twitter.com/H10z6GH7uT
— Daniela Vargas (@danivg2188) August 17, 2014
The federal government has shelled out more than $700 million in paid leave to more than 57,000 employees who were home from work for time periods stretching from one month to three years, a Government Accountability Office report has found.
In a 62-page report published Monday, the GAO analyzed why so many federal employees were home and getting paid for such long periods of time and they discovered a variety of reasons.
In many cases, employees were home awaiting the outcome of investigations into alleged misconduct and criminal actions. Some racked up paid leave for “physical fitness activities,” and others were away from work seeking professional development. Employees also took paid leave for “recuperation” from overseas work.
Hundreds of federal employees remained at home, collecting a paycheck, for years.
The report found that during a three-year period beginning in 2011, 263 employees remained on paid leave for one to three years at a cost of $31 million.
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(Reuters) – President Barack Obama made a rare appearance on the campaign trail on Sunday with a rally to support the Democratic candidate for governor in Maryland, but early departures of crowd members while he spoke underscored his continuing unpopularity.
With approval levels hovering around record lows, Obama has spent most of his campaign-related efforts this year raising money for struggling Democrats, who risk losing control of the U.S. Senate in the Nov. 4 midterm election.
Most candidates from his party have been wary of appearing with him during their election races because of his sagging popularity.
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In hopes of limiting the number of votes Mr. Bush could gain from military voters, Ronald A. Klain and other Gore advisers assigned Mr. Herron to draft a detailed memorandum for Gore lawyers to use in challenging ballots that did not comply with the law.
Bush advisers point to the Herron memorandum as evidence of how hard the Democrats were willing to fight to exclude military votes. ''We knew that there was going to be a systematic effort by the Gore folks to not count military absentee ballots despite the claims that they were uttering at the time about count every vote,'' said Benjamin L. Ginsberg, the Bush campaign's chief counsel. ''We knew they were important ballots, they knew they were important ballots. We wanted all the ballots to count. They wanted the ballots not to count.''
In some ways, the Gore strategy paid off, as canvassing boards rejected hundreds of military votes that violated the law.
WASHINGTON — The confidential memo from a former pollster for President Obama contained a blunt warning for Democrats. Written this month with an eye toward Election Day, it predicted “crushing Democratic losses across the country” if the party did not do more to get black voters to the polls.“African-American surge voters came out in force in 2008 and 2012, but they are not well positioned to do so again in 2014,” Cornell Belcher, the pollster, wrote in the memo, dated Oct. 1. “In fact, over half aren’t even sure when the midterm elections are taking place.”Mr. Belcher’s assessment points to an urgent imperative for Democrats: To keep Republicans from taking control of the Senate, as many are predicting, they need black voters in at least four key states. Yet the one politician guaranteed to generate enthusiasm among African Americans is the same man many Democratic candidates want to avoid: Mr. Obama.