"Our nation's nannies, scolds, and buttinskies started 2013 with a renewed hunger to mind other people's business. For reminding us of how far we've come since restaurant smoking bans, the January 2013 Nanny of the Month goes to Oregon Rep. Mitch Greenlick (D-Portland)!" Continue reading →
"ATF set up a undercover sting operation. But criminals stole weapons from them and the ATF, in turn, rips off citizen-landlord. Note also that when the citizen lodges complaints about damages and unpaid bills, he is threatened with criminal charges. Hmm." Continue reading →
"The death toll by murder in Chicago over the past decade is greater than the number of American soldiers who have died in Afghanistan since the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom. In a city with some of the toughest gun control laws in America, where a handgun cannot be purchased, Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy 'acknowledged aiming at assault weapons misses the mark when dealing with Chicago’s gang violence.' 'The weapon used is generally a handgun, and rarely is it purchased through legal channels,' he said." Continue reading →
"The United States on Wednesday criticized what it described as Russia’s 'self-defeating' decision to pull out of a decade-old drug control agreement. Nuland said the decision to end the program which had committed some $2 million for law enforcement training had come out of the blue, and Washington had only been informed of its this week. It is the third bilateral accord ripped up by Moscow in recent months — after the Russian government shut down the USAID aid agency offices last year and also banned adoptions of Russian children by US families." Continue reading →
"'Those whom the French and Africans are fighting now in Mali are the [same] people who ... our Western partners armed so that they would overthrow the Gaddafi regime,' Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a news conference. The toppling of Libyan ruler Muammar Qaddafi led to 'perhaps the greatest proliferation of weapons of war from any modern conflict,' Emergency Director of Human Rights Watch Peter Bouckaert told The Telegraph. Those weapons stockpiles were raided by both sides, and both sides had connections with radical militants." Continue reading →
"Bowing to pressure from the German armed forces, the Bundeswehr, the federal government in Berlin is preparing to deploy armed, unmanned drones in foreign conflicts. In an answer to an official query made by the far-left Left Party, the German government wrote that its experience in foreign combat operations has made it clear that reconnaissance vehicles must be armed 'in order to provide protection against sudden and serious changes in the situation.' It went on to say that the weapons boost safety and security through 'credible deterrence,' pointing to the 'Predator' drones used by the United States as a possible model." Continue reading →
"Admiral Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence from January 2009 to May 2010, told a Council on Foreign Relations conference call that current U.S. policy has created 'all kinds of legal knots' regarding how and when America uses the controversial counterterrorism tactic. Last week The Washington Post reported that the Obama administration is almost done with its 'playbook' designed to establish clear rules for targeted-killing operations, but the CIA will continue to be exempt from the rules for the next year or more." Continue reading →
"The federal government spent more than $7.9 billion on the program in 2012 alone to provide preschool services for nearly 1 million low-income Americans. There's just one problem: It doesn't work. As the 2010 Head Start Impact Study report notes, 'the benefits of access to Head Start at age four are largely absent by 1st grade for the program population as a whole.' Specifically, the language, literacy, math and school performance skills of the Head Start children all failed to improve. Since 1965, the federal government has spent $180 billion on Head Start." Continue reading →
"State Sen. Dan Brown on Tuesday told the Senate General Laws Committee that his bill bringing the NRA’s Eddie Eagle Gunsafe Program to every elementary school was an effort to teach children how to react if they encounter an unsecured firearm. Brown had first introduced the bill one day before 20 students were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Some Missouri schools already use the NRA program, but Brown aims to make it a universal requirement." Continue reading →
"A Bronx school went into lockdown this morning after a campus aide overheard a student talking about his gun -- a toy gun it turned out, officials said. The lockdown was called off after an hour and no weapon was found at PS 4, on Fulton Avenue and East 174th Street, officials said. School officials didn’t want to take any chances so they closed down campus, as heavily armed police swarmed PS 4 to search for that student. 'It's nerve racking. There are police officers here with assault rifles and there are helicopters flying around. It's really scary out here.'" Continue reading →