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President Obama vowed Tuesday that he would pursue an immigration reform vote in the House the "day after" Congress reached an agreement to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling. "Once that’s done, you know, the day after -- I’m going to be pushing to say, call a vote on immigration reform," Obama told Univision's Los Angeles affiliate. "And if I have to join with other advocates and continue to speak out on that, and keep pushing, I’m going to do so because I think it’s really important for the country. And now is the time to do it."

Consider for a moment what will come next for Obamacare, in the context of Ezra Klein’s five thoughts on the disastrous launch of the program – a bellwether of sorts for how the administration failed to live up to the expectations it sold to the law’s supporters and opinion leaders. There are a few different directions it can go from here, but the worst case scenario hasn’t really entered people’s consciences yet, in part because the insurers are staying quiet at the moment. The reality now is that the system is at least a month from actually working, and likelier...

Dear John: If you were hoping to have a quick "date" with the woman standing on the street corner in Sanford, you may want to think again. Starting this week, the Sanford Police Department will send "Dear John" letters to registered owners of vehicles spotted lingering in areas known for prostitution. (snip) Sanford police said Monday that letters will only be generated when an officer is confident the driver is circling the block looking for a prostitute, and not, for example, driving around lost. Automated license-plate readers placed on patrol vehicles will be used to capture images of the suspect...

Prosecutors have dropped a driving under the influence charge against the wife of former Miami Heat superstar Alonzo Mourning.

The Ministry of Defense's weapons development administration (Mafat) is targeting a global market worth $2 billion annually. The Ministry of Defense's Administration for the Development of Weapons and Technological Infrastructure (Mafat) has set the next challenge for Israel's defense industry: do for unmanned submarines what it did for unmanned aerial warfare. If the defense industry moves quickly and purposefully in identifying this emerging market, and offers a well-functioning unmanned submarine, it could be riding the right wave in a decade from now: Mafat aeronautics division director Dr. Yuval Cohen estimates that the market will be worth $2 billion a year...

ABERDEEN, MD (WJZ/CNN) – Police in Maryland arrested a suspect who allegedly tried to carjack the mother of baseball Hall of Famer Cal Ripken, Jr. The incident occurred on Tuesday outside of a bank in Aberdeen, MD, north of Baltimore. Police say a man with a handgun approached 75-year-old Violet Ripken and demanded her car. Ripken pressed the panic button her key ring, setting off the car's alarm and scaring the man away. He was later captured by police.

US defence firms eye $10.8bn UAE, Saudi sales Defence firms in the US are looking to sell military hardware worth $10.8bn to the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The Defence Security Cooperation Agency said it has notified Congress of the possible foreign military sales to the Gulf countries, with Boeing and Raytheon named as suppliers. The proposal includes the first US sales to Middle East allies of new Raytheon and Boeing weapons that can be launched at a distance from Saudi F-15 and UAE F-16 fighters. The Boeing Expanded-Response Standoff Land Attack Missile and Raytheon Joint Standoff Weapon give those nations...

Military authorities here worry about intelligence reports that North Korea is developing a new ground-to-ship ballistic missile with a range of 300 km which would be impossible to intercept with current weapons. "The North is developing a new ground-to-ship ballistic missile with a range of 200-300 km, an improved version of the KN-02 ground-to-ground ballistic missile," whose range is 140 km, a military source said Friday. "We're trying to verify the report." The North already has surface-to-ship cruise missiles like the KN-01 with a range of 160 km and the Silkworm missile with a range of 100 km. But ballistic...

SEOUL, Oct. 16 (Yonhap) -- The South Korean Navy has made a request to build three more Aegis destroyers to bolster defense against its Asian neighbors and North Korea amid increasing military tension due to territorial disputes, a military source said Wednesday. South Korea currently operates three 7,600-ton Aegis warships, but the Navy has sought to increase its fleet to cope with rising regional tension in light of Pyongyang's third nuclear test conducted earlier this year and ongoing territorial disputes between China and Japan. "The Navy made a request for three additional Aegis ships to the Joint Chiefs of Staff...

Tbilisi (AFP) - French authorities have detained a former Georgian defence minister wanted in his homeland on corruption charges, a police source said Tuesday. Davit Kezerashvili, a close ally of outgoing president Mikheil Saakashvili, was detained Monday at the Nice airport just before 1:00pm (1100 GMT), as he was trying to board a flight to Tirana, the capital of Albania, the police source said. "He was stopped by border police during an identity check. The police realised that he was the target of an international arrest warrant," the source said. Kezerashvili will now face an extradition hearing to determine whether...

".......A day that was supposed to bring Washington to the edge of resolving the fiscal showdown instead seemed to bring chaos and retrenching. And a bitter fight that had begun over stripping money from the president’s signature health care law had essentially descended in the House into one over whether lawmakers and their staff members would pay the full cost of their health insurance premiums, unlike most workers at American companies, and how to restrict the administration from using flexibility to extend the debt limit beyond a fixed deadline.............."

As the most profitable entertainment enterprise ever, the video game series Grand Theft Auto has completely enthralled players; and in this case, an Auburn football fan who decided it was time to play out his real-life version. As WDSU reports, on Saturday, September 21st around 2:30 AM, 20 year old freshman lacrosse player and Auburn student Zachary Burgess decided it was time for him to take his shot at GTA, for realsies. He stole a truck, kidnapped a woman, and ended up crashing into nine parked cars – a feat that took zero brain cells and cojones the size of...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court seemed prepared Tuesday to uphold a voter-approved ban on taking account of race in college admissions. The court heard arguments over a 2006 change to the state constitution to prohibit the University of Michigan and other state schools from any consideration of race when they decide whom to admit. The justices' focus was more on whether they could craft a narrow ruling to uphold Michigan Proposal 2 or would have to overrule earlier cases that protect minorities' rights to participate in the political process. Affirmative action supporters say the amendment itself is a form of...

A father and son who fled their village during the Vietnam War 40 years ago have apparently been discovered living in a treehouse deep in the jungle. Ho Van Lang, 42, and his 82-year-old father had reportedly shunned contact with the outside world after his wife and mother of his two children was killed by a landmine A local newspaper reported that they wore loincloths made of bark and used a homemade axe to chop down trees for firewood. They survived on corn that they had grown, plus fruits and cassava roots from the jungle. Inside their treehouse home, five...

The irony is rich. President Obama told Maryland college students just days before the launch of his healthcare “marketplace” that it would take just a few keystrokes to compare prices and policy details. “Don’t take my word for it, go on the website,” Obama told a crowd at Prince George’s Community College in Largo, MD, five days before the launch. “See for yourself what the prices are. See for yourself what the choices are and then make up your own mind. That’s all I’m asking.” But the bureaucrats in his administration clearly weren’t listening. They created a website that is...

(CNSNews.com) – National Park Service (NPS) rangers removed the handles from some 40 public water pumps and closed restrooms in the 184.5 mile- C&O Canal National Historical Park, but they haven’t been able to keep hikers and bikers off the popular trail known as a “cyclist’s dream.” “It’s full every day,” said Gail Hall, who runs Mountain Side Bikes at the trailhead in Cumberland, Md. “They’re bringing in their own water and utilizing the tree-lined areas [of the park] for restrooms. Some towns like Harper’s Ferry even brought in potties to accommodate them. As long as they can pedal, they...

JERUSALEM — The goal was merely to promote clean energy in Israel — but television ads starring a pair of male puppets called "plug" and "socket" have instead unleashed a debate about gay pride. The puppets, named Sheka and Teka in Hebrew, have appeared in ads for the state-owned Israel Electric Corp. for more than a decade. Israelis have long playfully questioned whether they might be gay. But the arrival of a baby puppet in the new campaign set off fresh speculation about their sexual orientation.

This heartening news just came in from the Middle Tennessee Chapter of ACT! For America. The anti-Shariah activists of Middle Tennessee managed to persuade the state textbook commission not to approve the purchase of high school textbooks that sanitize the history and doctrines of Islam. The efforts of these dedicated folks in Tennessee demonstrate that pushback can be effective. But you have to fight smart. You have to educate yourself, and join forces with other like-minded activists. You have to show public officials — who, after all, work for you — that you mean business, and you’re not going away....

#BREAKING: Police arrest airport employee in connection with dry ice explosions at LAX. @ABC News -Headline only. Still developing.

When CNSNews.com asked Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) if he had read all of the 10,535 pages of final regulations published by the administration to implement Obamacare in the Federal Register, he said he had not and described them as “incomprehensible.” “Well, of course, I voted against [Obamacare], and I have not read all the rules and regulations,” Fleming told CNSNews.com earlier this month at the Capitol. “They’re extremely complex. An average person even with a law degree or a medical degree like me can’t understand them,” Fleming said. “They’re incomprehensible.” When asked if he was surprised by the large number...

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama said on Tuesday the frantic stop-and-go effort in Congress to avoid a debt default and end a government shutdown is "a mess" as a gloomy mood descended over the White House with time running out to a Thursday deadline. Obama, who is to meet Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Wednesday, and his Democratic backers stressed there is still time to avoid a historic default even as efforts to reach a deal in Congress floundered on Capitol Hill. "My expectation is that it does get solved, but we don´t have a lot of time," Obama told...

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the Republicans DID compromise to avoid a shutdown. They were going to keep the government open, but asked that Obamacare be delayed. Yes, even Planned Parenthood would get their annual funding from the government. Senate Democrats under Harry Reid said no. … Given how the president’s approval rating has sunk to historic lows, this shutdown gives Obama a way to re-energize his stalled legislative agenda. He wasted the most precious moments of his second term on a gun control push that was never going to pass, and he was stuck in neutral until the...

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - Sen. Ted Cruz did not stand at the podium to give the keynote address Tuesday night at the 30th annual gala for the Republican Women of Huntsville. Instead, one of the nation's most outspoken GOP leaders addressed a packed ballroom at the Huntsville Marriott through live video from Washington on two screens set up in the corners. It didn't seem to matter as the junior senator from Texas received a warm, half-hearted standing ovation upon his introduction and a more raucous, more unanimous standing ovation upon the conclusion. He outlined his plan for American economic recovery, harshly...

Iranian leaders are doing everything they can to display their country’s Jewish population as satisfied, even if they have to resort to fakery to do so, according to Iranian Affairs expert Menashe Amir. Amir, who was born and raised in Tehran and now lives in Israel, explained that Iran’s leaders believe that showing Jewish support will help their image. … Iranian Jews suffer from discrimination as do all religious minorities in Shiite Muslim states like Iran, he said. The problems they face include, in some cases, a lack of access to medicine, he said. …

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Walmart has no regrets about allowing a wild shopping spree at two of its Louisiana stores when an electronic glitch lifted the spending caps on the cards of food stamp recipients. "We know we made the right choice," Walmart spokesman Kory Lundberg told ABCNews.com today. The chain has no regrets even though Louisiana's Department of Children and Family Services said food stamp recipients should have been limited to $50 each during the emergency and that Walmart will have to pay the difference. Lundberg declined to comment about how much the company may have lost or why it did not follow...

video 1:16:09 Interesting debate in which the conservatives are now trying to convince UKIP and Nigel Farage to take a dive in the next election while dangling the carrot of alliance later on. Nigel will have none of it. Great response from him. Tea Party is in a similar (yet not as strong) position as UKIP. We should study what is happening with UKIP very closely.

CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen has been trying for two weeks to sign up for ObamaCare. Unfortunately as she reported on Monday's New Day, despite trying for fourteen days including at hours that were claimed to be "off peak," she still hasn't been able to establish an account (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary): Read more . . .

Over the course of the week, the BizTimes editorial team attempted to log on to the website to learn more information about the new marketplaces. After running into several error messages on various attempts, we were eventually able to create an account, but were not able to fully log in to the online marketplace. Stephanie Smiley, communications director for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS), said that she said she did not know of a single Wisconsin resident who had been able to sign up for health insurance at healthcare.gov. "So far, folks are getting caught up in the...

SAN FRANCISCO - One reason the Republicans are so adamantly against Obamacare, is that it's driving individual insurance premiums up. And with the law now kicking in, the bills are coming due. In looking into this, we talked to health insurance companies, and representatives of Covered California, agency implementing the Affordable Care Act in California. What they told us may be a bitter pill to swallow, for those who will pay more. Cynthia Jaynes thought her family would benefit from the Affordable Care Act. The author of several young adult books says her family will see a minimum 11 percent...

My Sunday column focused on ways people could lower their 2014 income enough to qualify for tax-subsidized health insurance on a state-run exchange. Today's column is for people with the opposite issue - their income is too low to buy an exchange policy with a tax subsidy. Unless they increase their income above a certain threshold, their options are to enroll in Medicaid (called Medi-Cal in California) or pay full price for health insurance. The Affordable Care Act expanded Medicaid to a large group of people who were previously ineligible, but expansion was voluntary and not all states adopted it....

HUNTSVILLE, AL (WAFF) - One lawmaker in the eye of the storm that is the government shutdown offered his encouragement to residents in the Tennessee Valley Tuesday night. Texas Senator Ted Cruz spoke at a dinner held by the Huntsville Republican Women. He gave a speech and then took questions from the crowd, via a video link from Washington. Cruz had been scheduled to appear in person but the turmoil in Washington kept him there. During the event, Cruz took the opportunity to blast the Obama administration on a wide range of issues. "We're seeing the constitutional rights of law-abiding...

“The Health Insurance Marketplace is Open!” the home page on the Health Care.gov website breezily announces, but for most of the 14.6 million people who have tried to log in over the last two weeks, that promise proved a chimera. Computer problems caused by a perfect storm of complexity, inadequacy, and opposition have plagued the rollout of the Affordable Care Act. It’s not as if there were no forecasts of impending disaster. The New York Times reported that “deadline after deadline was missed.” Over the last 10 months, while HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius continued insisting that all was well, senior...

Is the Affordable Health Care Act making health care unaffordable for some people? Some customers of Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield, one of Oregon’s largest insurance providers, say that's exactly what's happening. They say they are finding their health care plans are dramatically changing under the Affordable Care Act. “Policy holders are seeing almost double their monthly premiums,” said a KATU viewer named Larry in an email. He said his wife’s premium will increase by $300 under the Affordable Care Act. The issue, according to Regence spokesman Jared Ishkanian, is you’ll have to pay for those benefits even if you...

WASHINGTON DC (KDKA) — Frustration seems to be more common in Washington than the ability to reach a bipartisan deal across party lines. Pennsylvania’s senior senator, a Democrat, knows who he blames. “The Tea Party caused this shutdown, and if we allow it to continue, we’re going to have a Tea Party default and that’s not good for anyone,” says Sen. Bob Casey. Sen. Casey says ultraconservatives in the House are so fixated on repealing or changing Obamacare that they are willing to risk the nation’s economic health. “If they keep throwing out the ideas they’ve been talking about that...

Officials said William Happ was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. at Florida State Prison in Starke. He was executed by injection. Florida has executed 51-year-old William Happ for the 1986 rape and strangulation of a woman he encountered by chance in a convenience store parking lot. Officials said Happ was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. at Florida State Prison in Starke. He was executed by injection, 24 years after he was sentenced to die following his conviction in the murder of 21-year-old Angie Crowley. In a final statement, Happ expressed remorse for his actions. "To my agonizing shame, I must...

Abdellah Taia, the only openly homosexual Moroccan writer, was in Venice to present his debut film, “Salvation Army”, adapted from his autobiographical novel about growing up gay in Morocco. FRANCE 24 sat down with Taia for an interview. By Jon FROSCH (text) In an edition of the Venice Film Festival notable for the prevalence of works grappling with global and societal woes (unemployment, terrorism, pollution, war), perhaps no film has blended the personal and the political as strikingly as Abdellah Taia’s “L’Armée du salut” (“Salvation Army”). A promising directorial debut presented in the independent “Critics’ Week” category on Wednesday, the...

Obtaining health care is no laughing matter. Yet the only way to cope with practical implications of the Democrat-sponsored Affordable Care Act is comic relief. Would Democrats rather commit political suicide than try to fix massive flaws in a bungled rollout of a mangled law? Forget about delaying Obamacare for a year, perhaps we should delay it until Democrats can pass a critically scored sanity check. A divisive law, that few read, and that a thin majority shoved down our throats deserves the date it will eventually get with the electoral version of “death panels”. It is a monstrosity which...

Women's rights have advanced across the world, and legislation is catching up with the times. In most modern countries, gender equality has been codified into the system. But not everywhere. Unfortunately, some retrograde legislation against women persists — and some laws are just downright incomprehensible. 1) Driving in Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia's long-standing driving ban hit headlines recently, after conservative Saudi cleric Sheikh Saleh al-Lohaidan announced that driving "harms women's ovaries" on a popular news site. "If a woman drives a car, not out of pure necessity, that could have negative physiological impacts as functional and physiological medical studies show...

"The big Kerry arm." That's how some of his Senate staff used to describe John Kerry's approach to negotiation. It's reminiscent of what Lyndon Baines Johnson used to do to his Senate colleagues: a little light physical pressure to drive home a point. You can bet that at some point over the weekend the six-foot-four Kerry, who landed in Kabul on an unannounced visit Friday, applied that big arm to the shoulders of the diminutive Hamid Karzai, the often combative and erratic president of Afghanistan, whom Kerry knows well and with whom no one else in the U.S. government seems...

Estimating casualties of war is a difficult science. Exact counts are nearly impossible to achieve, especially in areas where violent conflict continues long after the last of foreign troops have withdrawn. Determining a death toll for Iraqi civilians during the eight-year U.S.-led occupation has proven especially challenging. Multiple attempts by different organizations have covered only a few years of the war, and the resulting tallies range from as low as just over 100,000 to as high as 600,000. The latest estimates, detailed in a study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS Medicine, come from an investigation into the total number...

Ithaca, NY — An inmate in an Ithaca jail was named as part of a Central New York sex trafficking ring arraigned today. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced Tuesday the arrest and arraignment of three people involved in a ring which operated in Ithaca, Syracuse, Watertown and elsewhere. Eric Oliver, 30, of Syracuse, is alleged to be the leader of the ring. He was assisted by Tirra Pate, 19, also of Syracuse and Jessica Moro, 19, of Cicero. The New York Attorney General alleges Oliver contacted Pate and Moro in Ithaca and Watertown jails. “The sex trafficking ring was so...

House Republicans on Tuesday narrowed their attack on Obamacare to the issue of fairness, insisting that President Obama and his top political appointees all have to buy their insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges as part of a new bill to end the government shutdown and extend the federal debt ceiling. GOP leaders hope to put the bill on their chamber’s floor for a vote later Tuesday, with little time to spare before the Thursday deadline the Treasury Department has set for when it will run out of maneuvering room under the current $16.7 trillion debt ceiling. The new...

http://youtu.be/6dxpiO2Chc0

<p>Klein — who wrote a provocative biography about Obama last year entitled “The Amateur” — said White House insiders refer to Jarrett as “The Night Stalker” because she is the only presidential aide who frequently spends time in the family quarters and dines with the Obamas.</p>

Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin has finally found something he loves about the SAFE Act. “The only upside,” McLaughlin, a two-term Rensselaer County Republican, said from atop a homemade stage at the University at Albany Tuesday, is “that Andrew Cuomo will never, ever be president of the United States.” McLaughlin, who for 10 months has railed against Cuomo’s divisive new gun control law, assured the sparse but appreciative crowd that rushing the law through the Legislature on its first day in session last year torpedoed any White House aspirations harbored by the Democratic governor. “This was an arbitrary bill that just attacked...

This is very funny. A Daily Kos regular gets his Obamacare premium notice and is shocked to learn that as young, healthy people, he and his wife will pay twice as much! "My wife and I just got our updates from Kaiser telling us what our 2014 rates will be. Her monthly has been $168 this year, mine $150. We have a high deductible. We are generally healthy people who don’t go to the doctor often. I barely ever go. The insurance is in case of a major catastrophe. Well, now, because of Obamacare, my wife’s rate is gong to...

President Obama understands "the frustrations of the American people" more than anybody else. At least, that's what he told WABC in an interview: "One thing that I've shown is that if I say I'm prepared to compromise on something, I can deliver votes and we can get it done," Obama said. "So, look: Nobody shares the frustrations of the American people more than I do because I see day in and day out the damage that something like a shutdown does."

There is nothing more pernicious than the illusion of liberty surviving, or even flourishing, alongside growing government power. It doesn’t work that way, not once you get past the transition from anarchy to lawful government. Personal liberty does not exist in a state of anarchy, because individuals can be defrauded, robbed, and killed at will by lone predators and organized gangs. Some degree of government power must clearly be exercised to secure liberty. But when a government the size of America’s federal system grows larger, it occurs only at the expense of liberty, and the contraction of the private sector....

Attorney: Divorce rate likely to rise under Obamacare SAN DIEGO — The Affordable Healthcare Act could make health coverage more affordable for some, but it may have other side effects, like an increase in the divorce rate. heart healthFamily practice attorney Myra Fleischer stressed how healthcare costs carry a heavyweight when it comes to those considering calling it quits on their marriage. “The middle class is what this is supposed to help and most divorces are middle class,” said Fleischer. “We look at those numbers and they choose to stay in the marriage,” said Fleischer who explained how that may...

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