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On Oct. 1, a 64-year-old Nevada man opened fire on a crowd of concertgoers from a high-rise hotel in Las Vegas, killing 58 people and injuring hundreds. If you don't know his name, you can easily find it online, in print or on TV. But you won't learn it from this column. Notoriety may have been what he was after in methodically plotting the slaughter. He may have intended to outdo other mass shooters. He may have hoped his name would gain a sinister immortality. University of Alabama criminologist Adam Lankford has explained the repetition of such incidents as a...

October 01, 2013 Windows Media BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Okay, back to the phones and we're gonna go to East Lansing, Michigan. Got a lot of Michigan calls today. Must be something in the trunk lines. Here's Keith. Great to have you, sir. Hello. CALLER: It's an honor, Rush. Thank you for taking my call today. RUSH: You bet, sir. CALLER: I am a route sales representative, and I work down in Jackson, Michigan. RUSH: What kind of sales, med sales, did you say? CALLER: A route sales representative for a salty snack company. RUSH: Route sales, okay. CALLER: Yes. RUSH:...

How many readers notice Obama’s bold new initiative called “Connect-Ed” announced earlier this month. You might have heard about it in the form of a proposed increase in the Universal Service fund the FCC imposes on all cell phone users, with the exception of the two and a half million Obama phones. If you didn’t hear or glossed over the details since everything Obama does is proclaimed bold by news organizations. Obama is proposing to connect 99% of students to broadband internet service by calling on the FCC to “modernize and leverage” its E-Rate program to support this vision.

"John McCain can't see or won't acknowledge what's obvious to all of us here today -- that lobbyists aren't just part of the system in Washington, they're part of the problem."-- Then-Sen. Barack Obama campaigning in Montana, May 19, 2008.President Obama wants to place a new tax on your monthly cell phone bill to pay for his plan to put WiFi in more classrooms. And all he needs to do it is one more lobbyist in his administration. Getting American consumers to cough up the billions needed for Obama's "ConnectEd" initiative doesn't depend on Congress or anything so tedious as...

President Obama liked the idea laid out in a memo from his staff: an ambitious plan to expand high-speed Internet access in schools that would allow students to use digital notebooks and teachers to customize lessons like never before. Better yet, the president would not need Congress to approve it. White House senior advisers have described the little-known proposal, announced earlier this summer under the name ConnectEd, as one of the biggest potential achievements of Obama’s second term. There’s just one little catch — the proposal costs billions of dollars, and Obama wants to pay for it by raising fees...

Emigrant Bank was recently identified to receive a waiver that would allow the bank to opt out of rigorous Dodd-Frank requirements. These of course are the same new rules and regulations that Barack deems essential to the nation. Yet when the bank’s owner, Howard Milstein, who is a close friend and was a bundler for President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, protested that the new rules would seriously crimp operations of his bank, the Obama Administration worked with members of congress to grant him a waiver from the new rules. Other financial institutions and banks have consistently and vehemently argued that...

LOGAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan, Oct. 22, 2009 – Shoot, move and communicate. That’s a soldier’s motto on the battlefield, but without a stable Internet connection, communication would not be possible. Air Force Staff Sgt. Jeremy Emond inspects the satellite dish of the Virtual Secret Internet Protocol Router, Non-Secure Internet Protocol Router at Combat Outpost McClain, Afghanistan. Emond operates the system to free up more soldiers for combat operations. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Melissa Stewart  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Air Force Staff Sgt. Jeremy Emond does his part at Combat Outpost McClain, aiding soldiers by providing Internet access. “I’m...

KHOWST PROVINCE, Afghanistan, April 16, 2009 – Paratroopers at Forward Operating Base Salerno here are busy running fiber-optic lines to keep critical lines of communication open. Army Spc. Robert Troxler stands inside a communication vault in knee-deep water as he pulls lines of fiber-optic cable through tubing buried underground at Forward Operating Base Salerno, Afghanistan, March 22, 2009. U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Marcus Butler  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The 25th Infantry Division paratroopers of Charlie Company, 425th Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 4th Brigade Combat Team, are working to keep everyone connected through a variety of...

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan, Feb. 9, 2009 – Improvements at Forward Operating Base Blessing in northeastern Afghanistan are helping soldiers stay connected with their families and friends back home. Army Sgt. Maj. Lou Holzwarth explains the plans for construction of the new morale, welfare and recreation facility at Forward Operating Base Blessing in northeastern Afghanistan. U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. David Hopkins  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Construction of new buildings and the repositioning of departments on the installation have allowed the base’s morale, welfare and recreation facilities to move to a larger space in a newly renovated...

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan, Nov. 6, 2008 – Soldiers with the 1st Infantry Division’s Special Troops Battalion, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, make sure Task Force Duke has all appropriate lines of communication up and running so the mission can move forward. “We maintain the phone and Internet connections for Jalalabad Airfield, which is the central hub for the brigade,” said Army Sgt. Alexander Englehart from Temecula, Calif. “We control all of the phones here in Jalalabad as far as programming them, making sure the phone book is up-to-date and things like that. We pretty much do everything related to the phones,...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 3, 2007 – A troop-support group in California is working to connect military parents and their children one dog tag at a time. Servicemembers have sent more than 250,000 tags like these to their children as a reminder that Mommy or Daddy is thinking about them while deployed. Dog Tags for Kids, a California-based troop-support group, provides servicemembers deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan or Kuwait with the tags free of charge. Courtesy photo  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. In May 2004, “Dog Tags for Kids” embarked on its mission to provide deployed military parents a tangible way...

WASHINGTON, June 20, 2007 – Two Massachusetts teens are working to turn Americans’ unwanted cell phones into more than 12 million minutes of prepaid talk time for the nation’s troops. Brittany Bergquist, 16, and her brother, Robbie, 15, founders of Cell Phones for Soldiers, deliver prepaid phone cards to Coast Guardsmen aboard the USCGC Campbell. The Massachusetts teens collect and recycle unwanted cell phones, using the profits to purchase the phone cards. Courtesy photo  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. “Cell Phones for Soldiers is the original (cell phone) recycling program created to benefit the troops and provide free...

WASHINGTON, May 11, 2007 – Troops serving at remote sites overseas can look forward to better connection with their loved ones at home, thanks to the success of a fundraising gala here last night by the SemperComm Foundation. Country music star Chely Wright and her band perform at the SemperComm Foundation’s annual gala to raise funds to supply morale-boosting communications and entertainment equipment, software and services troops at remote posts. Photo Cpl. Earnest J. Barnes, USMC  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The event, which included a dinner, concert by country music star Chely Wright and silent and live...

SACRAMENTO– Orange County lawmaker Jose Solorio raised some eyebrows in December when he was named chairman of the Assembly Public Safety Committee. A rookie legislator, Solorio lacks the sort of background you might expect of the law enforcement chairman. He ran this fall on an education platform, touting his public policy degree from Harvard and encouraging Latinos to learn English. His slogan was "The Education Candidate." "The only qualification that I see is that he had a lot of money to spread around," said political watchdog Doug Heller of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights. Indeed, Solorio, D-Santa Ana,...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 29, 2006 -- The communication gap between military families at Fort Drum, N.Y., and their soon-to-be deployed servicemembers was bridged before it existed, thanks to Operation Homelink. Lisa Wrenn, with help from sons, Casey, 11, (center), and Cody, 8, carries a computer donated by Operation Homelink on Aug. 23 at Fort Drum, N.Y. Wrenn’s husband, Army Spec. William Wrenn, recently deployed with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division. Courtesy photo  '(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Operation Homelink is a member of the Defense Department's America Supports You program, which spotlights ways the American people and...

LOS ANGELES - Investigators said Tuesday they are trying to find at least 50 women they have linked to a photographer on death row for murdering two aspiring models in the early 1980s. Authorities are looking into whether the women were raped or killed between 1975 and 1984 by William Richard Bradford, according to a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Web site. In the 1970s and '80s, Bradford posed as a freelance photographer in the West Los Angeles area, taking sexually explicit photos of women he met at bars and auto races, according to the site. The site showed women...

CAMP AL QA'IM, Iraq (May 25, 2006) -- On his second deployment to Iraq, Lance Cpl. Jacob A. Lamb admits that communicating with friends and family back home is easier thanks to a relatively new program: Moto Mail. ‘Moto’ is short for ‘motivation,’ and it’s what U.S. service members like Lamb use as a means to keep contact with his friends and family back home. This roughly two-year-old program allows U.S. service members deployed overseas to receive letters via an electronic system. The letters are printed and enveloped at the military post office, and in the hands of the service...

WASHINGTON, May 19, 2006 – Military families are staying connected across the miles, thanks to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. VFW national headquarters staff members Alisa Nelson (left), Bud Haney (center) and Steve Crutcher prepare laptop computers for distribution to family support centers of deploying military units. Haney is director of the VFW's Military Assistance Program, which is administering the effort to facilitate contact between servicemembers and their loved ones at home. Courtesy photo  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. So far, about 103 of 150 laptop computers the VFW's Military Assistance Program purchased are in the field, said...

CAMP TAQADDUM, Iraq (May 16, 2006) -- As the hot Iraqi sun was beating down, sweat ceaselessly dripped from the faces of Marines erecting a radio tower. They grimaced while pushing a metal extension of an expandable antenna in the air as commands to tighten up the slack on guidelines were yelled. The tower seemed intimidating as it hovered more than 25 feet above the Marines' heads and could have crashed down if they weren't careful, but that didn't deter them and eventually the system was set up and secured. Marines of Communications Company, 1st Marine Logistics Group, must overcome...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (Army News Service, April 5, 2006) – The Army Child and Youth Services’ Army Teen Panel has launched Real Teens Connected, a Web site connecting youth from active Army and Reserve Components, as well as Department of Defense civilian youth around the world. Real Teens Connected is for teens ages 13 through 18. It offers a variety of services to all Army affiliated youth, including scheduled chats, question and answer boards, a youth support service, news updates and relocation information. To use the site, eligible youth must have an Army Knowledge Online account that is sponsored by parents/guardians...