Friday, January 11, 2013

January 11, 2013



NEWSMAX
NRA Calls Biden Meeting ‘Attack on Second Amendment’
by Todd Beamon
January 10, 2013

The president of the National Rifle Association said on Thursday that there was no negotiation with the Obama administration on gun rights in an effort to stem violence in the wake of the shootings at a Connecticut elementary school last month.


“There isn’t on guns,” NRA President David Keene told CNN. “There is not on guns, not that I can see.”

Keene’s remarks came as Vice President Joseph Biden said on Thursday that he saw a growing consensus for the federal government to seek universal background checks for gun buyers and a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines.

But the NRA president did tell CNN that the association could work with the White House in trying to get those who have been determined by law to be mentally ill into a national registry of those who are barred from purchasing firearms.

“That would make a difference, because the people who have been involved in these shootings have been people who are severely mentally ill,” Keene said, referring to the Dec. 14 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in which 20 children and six adults died.

“We don’t think you should demonize everybody who’s got a mental problem, but the fact is that there are people who are not in the gray area,” Keene told CNN. “They should not be allowed to buy firearms.”

Earlier on Thursday, the nation’s largest gun lobby said it was “disappointed” at a meeting a representative attended with Biden’s task force seeking solutions to end gun violence in the nation.

The NRA said the session, which included five other gun-rights organizations and other Obama administration officials, amounted to a strategy session on how to thwart the Second Amendment.

“We were disappointed with how little this meeting had to do with keeping our children safe and how much it had to do with an agenda to attack the Second Amendment,” the NRA said in a statement after the session.

“While claiming that no policy proposals would be ‘prejudged,’ this task force spent most of its time on proposed restrictions on lawful firearms owners — honest, taxpaying, hard-working Americans.”

Read more: http://goo.gl/Z1K0S


TOWNHALL
EBT Abuse: The Cash-for-Drunkards Program
by Michelle Malkin
January 11, 2013


From New York to New Mexico and across the dependent plains, welfare recipients are getting sauced on the public dime. Drunk, besotted, bombed. But while politicians pay lip service to cutting government waste, fraud and abuse, they're doing very little in practice to stop the EBT party excesses. Where's the compassion for taxpayers?

You see the signs everywhere: "We accept EBT." Fast-food restaurants do. Clothing retailers do. Auto repair shops, liquor stores and even sushi joints are joining the club. "EBT" stands for the federal government's electronic benefits transfer card, which is intended to provide poor people with food stamps and cash assistance for basic necessities. The two separate programs were combined into one ATM-like card designed to reduce the "stigma" attached to Nanny State dependency, and -- voila! -- an entirely new method of mooching was born.

If the idea was to eliminate the embarrassment of life on the dole, the social justice crowd succeeded phenomenally. Last weekend, the New York Post blew the lid off scammers who brazenly swiped their EBT cards "inside Hank's Saloon in Brooklyn; the Blue Door Video porn shop in the East Village; The Anchor, a sleek SoHo lounge; the Patriot Saloon in TriBeCa; and Drinks Galore, a liquor distributor in The Bronx." Out: Cash for clunkers. In: Cash for drunkards!

My home state of Colorado has seen similar abuse. Last year, local TV station 9NEWS reported that more than $40,000 was withdrawn from ATMs in metro-area liquor stores despite prohibitions against such spending. Colorado EBT users also splurged at Denver's Elitch Gardens amusement part, Disneyland, Universal Studios in Los Angeles and on the Las Vegas strip.

In New Mexico, Jim Scarantino of Watchdog.org reported that in just a three-month period, EBT cards were used at multiple liquor stores, girly bars, smoke shops and casinos both inside and outside the state. Californians are notorious EBT fraud artists; some $70 million in EBT funds were withdrawn from outside the state's borders over the past several years, including nearly $12 million taken out in Las Vegas. Watchdog.org kept tabs on government workers in Connecticut, Indiana, Iowa and Wisconsin nabbed in EBT fraud rings and schemes.

Several state legislatures have barred EBT spending on these vices, along with tattoo parlors, lottery tickets and cigarettes. Last February, President Obama signed GOP-backed welfare reform measures into law aimed at closing the so-called "strip club loophole" and preventing welfare recipients from blowing their cash benefits on booze, porn and gambling. But that law doesn't go into effect until next year. And many politicians are just shrugging their shoulders, muttering "Whaddya gonna do?"

Read more: http://goo.gl/GS6xA


HOT AIR
Biden: My task force will have some gun-control recommendations on Obama’s desk by Tuesday
by Allahpundit
January 10, 2013

The task force was supposed to have suggestions for O by the end of the month but that plan was kiboshed when the political reality of attention spans after mass shootings began to set in. So, new plan: The national lecture “conversation” on gun control will begin officially on Tuesday.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. told sports shooting groups Thursday he would send his recommendations on preventing gun violence to President Barack Obama by Jan. 15, according to a White House pool report. 
Biden mentioned several measures that he said he has heard supported repeatedly — universal background checks, limits on high capacity magazines, and the government’s ability to do research on gun violence. Biden clarified that background checks would go beyond closing the so-called gun show loophole. 
He compared the current limits on federal data gathering with the 1970s restrictions on federal research over the cause of traffic fatalities. He said there is a need to study which weapons are used most to kill and which tend to be trafficked.
The One will issue some sort of executive order too, likely tightening reporting requirements for federal agencies related to gun ownership and mental health and directing the DOJ to bump up prosecutions of gun traffickers. Eric Holder himself will be sitting in on Biden’s meeting today with major gun retailers like Wal-Mart, during which the veep will remind them that requiring universal background checks means fewer sales for private sellers and therefore more sales for them. Corporate buy-offs: They worked for ObamaCare with the pharmaceutical industry, why couldn’t they work for this?

Just one question: Whither the new assault-weapons ban? That’s a glaring omission from Biden’s list of new measures on which he senses a consensus. There’s no doubt they’re going to propose one but there’s also no doubt that the House will sink it. I think the AWB is really more of a negotiating tactic than an earnest demand: They’ll put it out there next week as their unrealistic opening offer so that they can drop it later in favor of more “reasonable” feasible measures like universal background checks and banning high-capacity magazines. Background checks, in particular, enjoy massive support, with one recent poll showing 92% in favor of requiring them at gun shows and a CNN poll taken last year finding 94% support for checks on all potential gun buyers. That’d be a very tough vote for congressional Republicans and of course Biden knows it, which is why he’s talking it up today. If you can’t get your policies passed, you might as well use them as a way to make the opposition squirm.


Read more: http://goo.gl/UbEAB


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