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Reality television star Kim Kardashian is drawing heavy fire for posting a photo of a jewel-encrusted handgun on Instagram just weeks after signing a pledge to reduce gun violence in honor of the Sandy Hook massacre. “Today, people in Newtown are making the #sandyhookpromise to reduce gun violence. Sign the pledge with me at http://www.sandyhookpromise.org,” she wrote at the time. But some are now conflating guns, with gun violence. Hollywood gossip aficionado Perez Hilton wrote: Now, Kim has been enjoying the shooting range for years now, and we’re sure she enjoys feeling like she can protect herself. But this was...

Government Executive reports House passes balanced budget bill. The House on Wednesday passed legislation that directs President Obama to submit a balanced budget plan to Congress this spring. The Require a Plan Act (H.R. 444) compels Obama to submit a supplemental budget by April 1 if his fiscal 2014 budget blueprint does not include a plan to balance the government’s books. That supplemental budget would outline a long-term deficit reduction strategy and timeline for balancing the budget. The chamber approved the legislation, shepherded by Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., and the GOP leadership, after debating it Wednesday morning. The Democratic-controlled...

The effects of the looming sequestration are already being felt at the Pentagon as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta delayed the deployment of two ships to the Persian Gulf region. The supercarrier USS Harry S. Truman and the guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg were scheduled to leave Norfolk, Va., for the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility. “Facing budget uncertainty — including a continuing resolution and the looming potential for across-the-board sequestration cuts — the U.S. Navy made this request to the secretary and he approved,” said Pentagon Press Secretary George Little. “This prudent decision enables the U.S. Navy to maintain these...

<p>NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) — Children from Newtown who recently recorded a version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" will be singing during the Grammy Awards.</p> <p>Sabrina Post, who directs the Newtown Music Project, says American Idol host Ryan Seacrest will be flying to Connecticut to do a live segment with the children on Sunday's broadcast.</p>

Let’s put ideology aside for a moment. Karl Rove, architect of the George W. Bush-era Republican victories, says he’s sick of fanatics running his party into the ground. So he’s devised a strategy to preemptively sink unelectable candidates early in the process. He’s formed a new super PAC to implement this strategy. It’s called the Conservative Victory Project, and it’s led by a guy named Steven Law, who was the head of another super PAC, called American Crossroads, which went something like 0-7 in the 2012 election cycle. (Not that anyone’s counting.) Grass-roots conservatives, needless to say, are quite perturbed....

Conservatives might take heart from a recent poll showing a decline in Americans' trust in government. But Chris Cillizza sees it as a "depressing reality." So wrote Cillizza in his "Fix" column in today's Washington Post. Let's consider what Thomas Jefferson's had to say about the need for a healthy distrust of government, and speculate as to why Cillizza is bummed out by the polling news. More here.

There was rare good news from Washington last week, as eight senators—four from each party—announced a "Bipartisan Framework for Comprehensive Immigration Reform." The so-called Gang of Eight proposed a "tough but fair path" to citizenship for undocumented immigrants that would commence only after the federal government secured the borders and put in place systems to prevent foreigners from overstaying their visas and to help employers verify that any new hires are legal.

Who else could it have been? Jindal and Paul Ryan have already done it, Rand Paul’s probably still too close to the rEVOLution for Republican leaders to be comfortable with him in a spot like this, and Chris Christie would just end up talking about how terrific Obama’s speech was. Half the reason party leaders are pushing amnesty, I’m convinced, is because Rubio’s that good in front of a mic and this issue gives him access to lots and lots of microphones. If, as McCain bluntly concedes, immigration reform is all about earning goodwill from Latino voters, then of course...

Iran's supreme leader Thursday strongly rejected proposals for direct talks with the United States, effectively quashing suggestions for a breakthrough one-on-one dialogue on the nuclear standoff and potentially other issues. The statement posted on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's website echoes previous remarks opposing bilateral talks with Washington in parallel with stop-and-start nuclear negotiations with world powers, including the U.S.,which are scheduled to resume later this month. But the latest comments marked Khamenei's first reaction since the idea of direct talks received a high-profile boost earlier this week from U.S.­ Vice President Joe Biden during a security summit in Munich attended by...

Finance Search Thu, Feb 7, 2013, 9:19 AM EST - U.S. Markets open in 11 mins. Advertisement Advertisement Stock Watch Greenlight's Einhorn Sues Apple Over Cash Plans (See Story) Jobless claims fall, trend reading at near five-year low ReutersReuters – 41 minutes ago Email 1 Print Related Content A job seeker (R) meets with a prospective employer at a career fair in New York City, October 24, 2012. REUTERS/Mike SegarView Photo A job seeker (R) meets with a prospective employer at a career fair in New York City, October 24, 2012. REUTERS/Mike Segar WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of Americans...

Congressional intelligence committee members are going to find out today how the Justice Department has rationalized the killing of Americans by drone strike without due process. The Obama administration has authorized the release of a classified report that goes into detail about how DoJ arrived at their controversial conclusions on not only drone strikes, but rendition and certain "enhanced interrogation techniques." Washington Post: Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a committee member who had pressed the administration to provide the opinion, left open the possibility he might still try to block Brennan's nomination. He said turning over the opinion was a...

Nothing about illegal immigration quite adds up. Conservative corporate employers still support the idea of imported, cheap, non-union labor — in a strange alliance with liberal activists who want the larger blocs of Latino voters that eventually follow massive influxes from Latin America. Yet how conservative are businesses that in the past flouted federal law — and how liberal are activists who undermined the bargaining power of American minimum-wage, entry-level workers, many of them minorities? The remedies for illegal immigration under discussion are just as incoherent. If the government now plans to offer some foreign nationals a pathway to citizenship,...

Nothing about illegal immigration quite adds up. Conservative corporate employers still support the idea of imported, cheap, non-union labor -- in a strange alliance with liberal activists who want the larger blocs of Latino voters that eventually follow massive influxes from Latin America. Yet how conservative are businesses that in the past flouted federal law -- and how liberal are activists who undermined the bargaining power of American minimum-wage, entry-level workers, many of them minorities? The remedies for illegal immigration under discussion are just as incoherent. If the government now plans to offer some foreign nationals a pathway to citizenship,...

A multi-agency manhunt is under way in California after police say the former Los Angeles police officer suspected in the murders of a college basketball coach and her fiancé last weekend opened fire Wednesday night on three police officers, killing one, KTTV.com reported.

Georgia Republican Rep. Paul Broun built his Wednesday Senate campaign rollout around a promise to cut spending. “When I was sworn into the Marine Corps, and then again into the House of Representatives, I swore to defend the Constitution against all enemies both foreign and domestic. Out-of-control spending has become our nation’s enemy,” he said in a statement released after a rally in Atlanta. “I’ll be the only candidate in this race whose first priority is to stop the runaway spending in Washington D.C.” Broun, the first candidate to get in, said he’s “sponsored more legislation to reduce spending than...

Religious and community leaders will gather Thursday in Washington for the 61st annual National Prayer Breakfast, where President Obama will offer his first major remarks to America’s faith community since he announced his support for gay marriage last May. Obama usually shies away from policy at the breakfast — in his first four, he only briefly mentioned health care, immigration and the fiscal crisis. His only mention of sexuality was a quick aside in 2010. But many of the 3,000-plus guests will be wondering if his new position finds its way into his remarks. The National Prayer Breakfast’s organizer, the...

Washington (CNN) - Furloughed workers, reduced combat readiness, shrunken naval operations and cuts to Air Force flying hours and weapons maintenance. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta listed those consequences as he provided a stark warning Wednesday about the effects of impending budget cuts on the military. The result, he said, would be "the most serious readiness crisis" faced by the military in over a decade.

Dick Yuengling said he was "probably the happiest guy in the beer business" - until Tuesday. --snip-- The suit claims that Yuengling refused to let the city's Revenue Department audit its books, so the department made an assessment based on a Philly beer distributor's accounts-payable list. The suit has no details of what activities Yuengling conducted in Philadelphia that the city found to be taxable. City officials declined to elaborate. Green said that filing suit may have been the only way to access Yuengling's records. "This lawsuit will allow the Department of Revenue to do the discovery that Yuengling rejected,"...

New York Times and Washington Post knew about secret drone base in Saudi Arabia but agreed not to disclose it to the public US news organisations are facing accusations of complicity after it emerged that they bowed to pressure from the Obama administration not to disclose the existence of a secret drone base in Saudi Arabia despite knowing about it for a year. Amid renewed scrutiny over the Obama administration's secrecy over its targeted killing programme, media analysts and national security experts said the revelation that some newspapers had co-operated over the drone base had reopened the debate over the...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — U.S. businesses did not produce goods and services as efficiently at the tail end of 2012, the Labor Department said Thursday. Workers put in more time but companies barely increased their output. Productivity fell at a 2.0% annual rate in the October-to-December period, according to the agency’s preliminary assessment. The decline — the sharpest in almost two years — partly reverses a revised 3.2% gain in the third quarter. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had expected productivity to fall 1.5%, largely because growth in the fourth quarter contracted and hours spent on the job increased.