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Venezuela has major crime problems ... we hear a lot about the systemic violence in Mexico, but by at least one count, Venezuela's murder rate is four times higher than that of Mexico's and the highest in all of South America. As such, violent crime is one of the most dominant political issues in the socialist nation, and will factor hugely in their upcoming October elections.And so, in a typically misguided move to cut down on crime, the government has decided to ban the commercial sale of firearms and ammunition. How and why making it illegal for lawful citizens to...

One of the few Republicans in the country who's been tirelessly pushing for the implementation of Obamacare at the state level has been tapped to head Mitt Romney's transition team, should he become president. Former HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt, and his consulting group Leavitt Partners, are the primary advocates within Republican circles for implementation of Obamacare's exchanges. It just so happens that his consultancy is one of the major beneficiaries of the taxpayer funded gold mine of hundreds of millions of dollars in exchange implementation grants.

MILWAUKEE, Wis. — Fearing their own bargaining rights could be stripped away, members of New York’s powerful unions piled onto planes to Wisconsin in an effort to topple GOP Gov. Scott Walker in tomorrow’s recall election. Dozens representing, among others, health-care Local 1199 East, building-service Local 32BJ and Local 726 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, are knocking on doors, making calls and handing out fliers to support Democrat Tom Barrett over Walker. And members from around the country of the Transport Workers Union are badgering voters in the Badger State by cold-calling them using an online phone bank. Many Wisconsin...

What to think of the latest PPP poll in Wisconsin? One one hand, a narrow lead within the margin of error on the day before an election might signal a slight and final shift in momentum in Tom Barrett's favor. On the other, PPP is a Democratic pollster who might be looking for the best possible take on the race ... and having the Democrat down three as a best case would be a positive for supporters of Scott Walker. The Hill reports on the results: A new poll finds Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker with a narrowed lead over...

Neil Boortz will announce on his program this morning that he will be retiring in January. He will pass his seat over to longtime friend Herman Cain who thinks “they” think you’re stupid. WSB appears to have accidentally released the announcment on their website, where a cached version of the announcement says it is set to post at 10:07 am this morning. Of Boortz’s news, it says:Today national radio talk show host Neal Boortz announced live on his program that he’s retiring from his daily show and passing the torch to his friend and colleague, Herman Cain. His last day...

BANGKOK (AP) — World markets took a beating Monday as another setback for the U.S. economic recovery sent investors fleeing from stocks. A weak U.S. jobs report flustered investors and intensified fears that a global recession was in the making. The dismal report released Friday came on the heels of other data that showed weak economic conditions in Europe and Asia.

California could gain as much as 100,000 jobs and $4.4 billion in economic spillover if the U.S. Supreme Court upholds President Barack Obama's health care plan, according to a report. A Bay Area Council Economic Institute report says the San Joaquin Valley would see employment rise by more than 3,500 jobs and its economy expand by $65 million. Had the health care law taken full effect in 2010, the report says California's economy - helped by federal and state subsidies - would have received a $6.7 billion boost from new spending on doctors, hospitals, medical device manufacturers and the hiring...

by John HillStand With ArizonaFlorida has drawn a line in the sand which must be adopted by every state against an Attorney General and administration which is increasingly abusing and distorting the law to stop efforts to keep illegal voters away from the polls this November. The Department of Justice this week demanded that Florida immediately cease its current massive purge of non-citizens and dead persons from its voter rolls, absurdly citing the outdated and outmoded Voting Rights Act of 1965. Well, now Florida has refused, saying it will not give up its efforts to make sure only legal citizens...

The global economy's foundations are weakening, one by one. Already hobbled by Europe's debt crisis, the world now risks being hurt by slowdowns in its economic powerhouses. The U.S. economy, the world's largest, had a third straight month of feeble job growth in May. High-flying economies in China, India and Brazil are slowing, too...

Eric Holder, Barack Obama's attorney general and David Axelrod, his top political adviser had to be separated after squaring up during a furious row over attempts to impose White House operatives in the justice department.

While proponents of immigration enforcement have been told that the federal government monitors the hiring of illegal aliens by the private sector, including adherence to the federal employment verification (I-9) program, Attorney General Eric Holder's Justice Department appears to have made a decision to penalize organizations that zealously comply. For example, on Thursday the Justice Department announced that it filed a civil lawsuit against the Tuscany Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, accusing the company of engaging in "a pattern or practice of discrimination in the employment eligibility verification and re-verification process."

Alan Krueger, head of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, pointed out that the country has added jobs for 27 months in a row, including 4.3 million jobs in the private sector. The economy still has a few bright spots. Americans bought cars and trucks a strong pace last month, giving automakers their best May since 2008. Underscoring the challenge for Obama with five months to go in the campaign, a May poll by The Associated Press and GfK, a research company, showed that 52 percent disapproved of Obama's handling of the economy while 46 percent approved. Some financial analysts...

After a contentious court hearing with convicted bomber Brett Kimberlin, conservative blogger Aaron Walker was taken into custody, The Blaze reported Tuesday. [snip] In 1981, Kimberlin was sentenced to 50 years in federal prison for a long list of crimes, including the 1978 terrorist bombing that brutally maimed Vietnam veteran Carl DeLong. He served 17 years in prison before being released. Since then, he has become a liberal activist whose work has been funded in part, by George Soros' Tides Foundation, Barbra Streisand and Teresa Heinz Kerry. On May 25, The Blaze published a lengthy expose on Kimberlin, detailing his...

According to the poll, 49% of registered voters say that if the November election were held today, they would vote for Obama, while 46% say they would cast a ballot for Romney, the unofficial GOP presidential nominee. The president's three point margin is within the survey's sampling error. Obama had a nine point advantage in CNN's last national poll, which was conducted in early April. "Which candidate better understands how the economy works? That's a tie as well - 45% pick Obama, 45% choose Romney," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. Although the race for the White House is essentially...

In the Lowe case, news stories said, a thug named Loren Manning Jr., accompanied by two other thugs, jumped Lowe on a city street last October. Lowe, 57, is a disabled and retired Marine, who has had two strokes and two heart surgeries and wears a pacemaker. Manning and his sidekicks attacked Lowe and witnesses said Manning chased him and tried to clobber him with a metal pole before catching him and pinning him to the ground, where Lowe managed to retrieve a small pocket knife and used it to stick Manning, who, tragically, died. This is Philadelphia, mind you,...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows Mitt Romney picking up 48% of the vote, while President Obama attracts 44%. Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate, and five percent (5%) are undecided.

AURORA, Colo. – Police have a “person of interest” in custody in connection with the robbery of the Wells Fargo back at 15301 E. Hampden Avenue Saturday afternoon. Immediately following the robbery, police closed the intersection of Iliff and Buckley after reports the suspect might have taken hostages. According to our crew on the scene, police stopped and searched nearly two dozen cars. The adult occupants of the vehicles were handcuffed during the investigation.

The Mexican ambassador to the United States told a Capitol Hill forum that his government was “kept in the dark” about U.S. government-condoned and abetted “gunwalking” operations, and also questioned the intent behind Operation Fast and Furious, The Los Angeles Times is reporting today. Appearing before “the New Democrat Network...a center-left think tank and advocacy organization, and the New Policy Institute, one of its sister organizations,” Arturo Sarukhan’s claims raise questions as to why major news outlets like The Times are just now getting around to reporting on information raised in this column and on the Sipsey Street Irregulars blog...

Defence sources said the “surgical” operation showed the “precision, skill and courage” of British special forces after they stormed the cave where Helen Johnston, 28, was held, and killed her kidnappers. David Cameron spoke individually to the soldiers to thank them for an “extraordinarily brave” mission. He warned that anyone who took British citizens hostage faced “a swift and brutal end”. Miss Johnston, a committed Christian, along with Moragwa Oirere, a Kenyan colleague, and two Afghan women who worked for the same aid agency, were said to be physically well after their ordeal. Miss Johnston’s parents expressed their gratitude to...

The May employment numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics offer the third month of disappointing news for labor markets after a perceived mid-winter rally. At an unemployment rate of 8.2 percent, the economy is not much better off now than when the year began. In the months since January, young adults -- who had already endured the worst effects of the recession -- managed to close the gap with their older counterparts, bringing their unemployment rates into closer alignment with the economy overall while maintaining fairly steady labor force participation. But the gains have been slow, and eked out...

“Hey, let me have one of those suckers.” “Can I get two? One for Mom.” “Awesome, this really does the trick.” So, yes, people were scooping up free doughnuts with vigor outside Madison Square Park on Friday morning. It was, after all, National Donut Day, the 75th annual celebration of the confection, and Entenmann’s, the big sweet goods maker, had some 7,500 of its iconic Rich Frosted doughnuts available for the taking. The Salvation Army, which started the whole thing in 1938 to honor women who served doughnuts to soldiers during World War I, was on hand too, furnishing coffee....

A dire US jobs report that showed unemployment up after a measly 69,000 jobs were created in May landed like a nuclear bomb yesterday on President Obama’s re-election campaign. -snip- Martha Roldan of Harlem agreed. “President Obama needs to stand up to the plate. He needs to tell us the truth about what’s happening,” fumed Roldan, 49, a certified home aide who’s been looking unsuccessfully for a second job since her hours were cut a year ago. “Don’t tell us there are jobs when there are no jobs. Don’t lie to us. We’re not children,” she said. “I’m struggling. I...

WASHINGTON -- Mitt Romney scuttled the Massachusetts government's long-standing affirmative action policies with a few strokes of his pen on a sleepy holiday six months after he became governor. No news conference or news release trumpeted Romney's executive order on Bunker Hill Day, June 17, 2003, in the deserted Statehouse. But when civil rights leaders, black lawmakers and other minority groups learned of Romney's move two months later, it sparked a public furor. Romney drew criticism for cutting the enforcement teeth out of the law and rolling back more than two decades of affirmative action advances. Civil rights leaders said...

Speaking at the North Carolina GOP Convention, Trump praised Romney for his business experience and promise to stand up against China and fight for American economic interests. But the business mogul also focused a portion of his speech on his questions about where President Obama was born. It is the reason why on Tuesday, when Romney earned the 1,144 delegates necessary to secure his party's nomination, much of the news cycle was devoted to his decision to appear with Trump at a fundraiser that day. A desire by the media to protect Obama is the reason Trump told the more...

2 June 2012 Last updated at 03:54 GMT Leon Panetta: US to deploy 60% of navy fleet to Pacific The US is planning to move the majority of its warships to the Asia-Pacific region by 2020, Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has revealed. He said that by 2020 about 60% of the US fleet would be deployed there, in the clearest indication yet of the new US strategy in Asia. Mr Panetta told a regional security meeting in Singapore that the shift was not aiming to contain Chinese power. Beijing has indicated it is unhappy with the US boosting its presence....

In March, Rep. Adam B. Schiff(D-Burbank) introduced legislation that would create two-year prison sentences for "straw purchasers," who acquire weapons to sell to Mexican gun smugglers. Currently, straw purchasers face probation or minimal jail time. Yet he worries that Republicans may oppose the legislation in order to keep the focus on the Fast and Furious debacle. "The Justice Department's inspector general is doing an investigation, and members on both sides of the aisle agree that we need to get the facts," Schiff said. "What I don't want is the continual use of this investigation for political purposes that distract us...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: First it was Cory Booker, who said that Obama's attacks on Romney and Bain Capital he didn't like. They were nauseating. This kind of politics he doesn't like. Then Fast Eddie Rendell, the governor of Pennsylvania, echoed Cory Booker, ripping into Obama for attacking Romney and Bain. And Lanny Davis, Mr. Bill Clinton defender, goes on TV and totally rips Obama for the campaign of blaming Romney and Bain Capital. And the latest, Deval Patrick, governor Massachusetts; the latest is now Bill Clinton. And you may not have heard this 'cause it was on CNN last night...

(CBS News) Showing his willingness to break from his party, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said on Friday he would accept $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue increases and criticized activist Grover Norquist's no-tax pledge that most GOP lawmakers have signed.

Economy: President Obama has been on the job for nearly three and a half years, but the White House says bad news on jobs is George W. Bush's fault. Time to own up to your own record, Mr. President. It was the most tepid job growth seen in America in a year, with fewer than 70,000 jobs added for May — less than half what economists expected. On top of that, March and April's combined job growth was revised downward by almost 50,000. The unemployment rate is again going in the wrong direction, from April's 8.1% to 8.2% in May....

After bad jobs report, Obama parties with radicals 11:14 AM 06/01/2012 On the heels of a depressing jobs report, Barack Obama is raising $5 million at fundraisers in Chicago this Friday – including one co-hosted by Marilyn Katz. So who is Marilyn Katz? According to the New York Times, she’s the person who gave Obama “entry into another activist network: the foot soldiers of the white student and black power movements that helped define Chicago in the 1960s. As a leader of Students for a Democratic Society then, Ms. Katz organized Vietnam War protests, throwing nails in the street to...

“Harnessing the awesome power of zombies; it’s not just to run away from anymore.” Democratic candidate Vermin Supreme gives hope that our country’s leaders might just see the future for the rotting, bloodhungry nightmare that it is. He runs on a platform of lessening the demand for foreign oil (among other things) by hitching tireless zombies to giant turbines that will convert shambling into electricity. He promises this will be accomplished by, “Lot’s of zombies… that we’ll sort-of dangle brains in front of…” If, in these unfortunate times, only one candidate acknowledges the coming deademic, then that’s the president for...

Conservative bloggers say they are being terrorized by a potentially deadly prank in which phony 911 calls bring armed cops to their doors in search of criminals, all in retaliation for their blog posts. At least two conservative Internet pundits have reported being victims of "SWAT-ing." In at least one incident, the caller claimed to be the resident of the home and confessed to shooting his wife, according to a recording of the call posted online. "It's a phone call that could have gotten me killed," Patrick Frey, a deputy district attorney at Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, wrote...

Published on Jun 1, 2012 by mittromney Two years ago, President Obama went to Solyndra and touted it as an example of his initiative to create jobs. Today, the company is bankrupt and the building stands empty as a symbol of the failure of President Obama's

U.S. stocks erase most of 2012 gains after jobs report ReutersReuters – 42 minutes ago By Rodrigo Campos NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks erased most of the year's gains on Friday after a much weaker-than-expected jobs report added to fears about a global economic slowdown. The Dow industrials turned negative for the year and the S&P 500 was on track to close at its lowest since early January. The benchmark traded below its 200-day average for the first time in 2012. The Labor Department said employers created a net 69,000 jobs last month, the weakest in a year and...

SANFORD, Fla. - A judge Friday revoked bond for George Zimmerman, and gave the neighborhood watch volunteer who killed Florida teen Trayvon Martin 48 hours to surrender. Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester Jr. said that Zimmerman engaged in "material falsehood" about money in issuing his ruling. About an hour before the ruling came, prosecutors in the second-degree murder case again Zimmerman had filed a new motion requesting the bond revocation.They contended Zimmerman's wife knew about the donations he had collected through a PayPal account, but didn't mention the money at his bond hearing. Zimmerman's PayPal account collected more than $200,000, his...

The US and Israel partnered on the Stuxnet worm years ago in a top-secret attempt to slow down the Iranian development of nuclear weapons, according to current and former US officials. After a New York Times report this morning exposed the partnership, the Washington Post got confirmation from its sources. Interestingly, both newspapers emphasize Barack Obama’s role in the cyberattack strategy, while pushing the fact that George Bush actually ordered the program into existence to lower paragraphs. Here’s the New York Times: From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that...

The House on Thursday rejected a Republican bill that would impose fines and prison terms on doctors who perform abortions for the sole purpose of controlling the gender of the child, a practice known as sex-selective abortion. The Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act (PRENDA), H.R. 3541, was defeated in a 246-168 vote. While that's a clear majority of the House, Republicans called up the bill under a suspension of House rules, which limits debate and requires a two-thirds majority vote to pass. In this case, it would have required more support from Democrats. Twenty Democrats voted for the bill, while seven Republicans...

So it starts. "Taking down the US growth projection has almost become a summertime ritual, and in keeping with tradition we are shaving our 2012 GDP outlook (Q4/Q4) from 2.3% to 2.1%. Over the first five months of the year the labor market has steadily lost momentum and we are now confronted with a global growth slowdown which will provide a further headwind to the economy. As such, we are taking Q3 growth from 3.0% to 2.0%, with much of the downward revision accounted for by an expectation that the pace of export growth will slow. We are leaving our...

Gun rights advocates recently discovered that the gun control group Mayors Against Illegal Guns has burrowed its "gun violence prevention coordinators" (read "anti-gun lobbyists") into city payrolls from Augusta, Maine to Seattle, Washington, at taxpayer expense. MAIG is the brainchild of New York City's zealous anti-gun billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who formed the group at a 2006 gun control summit held in Gracie Mansion and co-hosted by Boston Mayor Thomas Menino. MAIG touts an agenda of "commonsense reforms" that gun rights advocates see as being somewhere on the far side of repealing the Second Amendment. With a membership that started...

President Obama wrote a letter to the president of Poland in which he expressed regret for his words during the Medal of Freedom ceremony in which he referred to World War II-era “Polish death camp” instead of a Nazi death camp in Germany-occupied Poland. “In referring to ‘a Polish death camp’ rather than ‘a Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland,’ I inadvertently used a phrase that has caused many Poles anguish over the years and that Poland has rightly campaigned to eliminate from public discourse around the world,” President Obama wrote. “I regret the error and agree that this moment...

President Obama will jump-start what looks to be a major June fundraising push with six money events today in Minneapolis and Chicago - the most fundraisers he's held in a single day since launching his bid for a second term. Obama is expected to raise more than $7.2 million total for the Obama Victory Fund (OVF), according to figures provided by the campaign. Flying to Minnesota under the banner of "official business" - an event at a Honeywell factory in a Minneapolis suburb - Obama will quickly turn to politics, lunching with three separate sets of donors at the downtown...

Former President Bill Clinton suggested in a television interview Thursday that he believes President Obama's re-election campaign should stop trashing Mitt Romney's work in the private equity industry. In an interview with CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight," Clinton, a top Obama surrogate who is set to raise cash with the president next week, directly contradicted Democrats who have attacked Romney's business record, suggesting it does qualify him for president. "I think he had a good business career," Clinton told guest host Harvey Weinstein, a movie mogul who is one of Obama's top fundraisers. "There's no question that in terms of getting...

President Bill Clinton veered sharply off message Thursday, telling CNN that Mitt Romney's business record at Bain Capital was "sterling." "I don't think that we ought to get into the position where we say 'This is bad work. This is good work,'" Clinton said. "The man who has been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold." Clinton also went on to say that Romney's time at Bain Capital represented a "good business career." The Obama campaign is in the third week of an all-out assault on Romney's time as a corporate buyout specialist — accusing the...

Time Bomb? Banks Pressured to Buy Government Debt CNBC, NETNET, NET NET, EUROPE DEBT, GREEK DEBT, EUROPEAN DEBT CRISIS, ECB, EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK Posted By: Jeff Cox | CNBC.com Senior Writer CNBC.com | 31 May 2012 | 02:42 PM ET US and European regulators are essentially forcing banks to buy up their own government's debt—a move that could end up making the debt crisis even worse, a Citigroup analysis says. Regulators are allowing banks to escape counting their country's debt against capital requirements and loosening other rules to create a steady market for government bonds, the study says. While that...

As of 10 a.m. EDT Friday WTI Crude Oil: $83.90/bl - down $2.83 - down 3.04% Brent Crude Oil: $98.96/bl - down $2.87 - down 2.82% Gold: $1614.02 - up 3.48% Brent Crude (European) oil was over $110/bl just a month or so ago while WTI Crude (West Texas) was above $105/bl not that long ago.

The Justice Department told Florida election officials that they must stop their non-citizen voters purge. Florida argues it is not violating any law. The Justice Department ordered Florida’s elections division to halt a systematic effort to find and purge the state’s voter rolls of noncitizen voters. Florida’s effort appears to violate both the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which protects minorities, and the 1993 National Voter Registration Act – which governs voter purges – T. Christian Herren Jr., the Justice Department’s lead civil rights lawyer, wrote in a detailed two-page letter sent late Thursday night. State officials said they were reviewing...

According to the Wall Street Journal, Polish officials requested that Walesa accept the Medal of Freedom on behalf of Jan Karski, a member of the Polish Underground during World War II who was being honored posthumously this week. The request makes sense. Walesa and Karski shared a burning desire to rid Poland of tyrannical subjugation. But President Obama said no.

WASHINGTON — From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program. Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks — begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games — even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran’s Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began...

A battle over a federal law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman appears headed for the Supreme Court after an appeals court ruled Thursday that denying benefits to married gay couples is unconstitutional. In a unanimous decision, the three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston said the 1996 law deprives gay couples of the rights and privileges granted to heterosexual couples. The court didn't rule on the law's more politically combustible provision — that states without same-sex marriage cannot be forced to recognize gay unions performed in states where...

The widow of President Ronald Reagan says she is firmly behind Romney. And she says that her "Ronnie" would have liked Romney's business background and what she calls his "strong principles." In a statement issued after the Romneys' visit, Mrs. Reagan said she believes that Romney has the experience and leadership skills that, in her words, "our country so desperately needs."