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MILLER: Witaschek surrenders to D.C. police ‘Gun Offenders Registry’ Businessman convicted of having unregistered muzzleloader bullets By Emily Miller The Washington Times Friday, March 28, 2014 Mark Witaschek never had a firearm in the District of Columbia, but he is now on the city’s Gun Offenders Registry. This bizarre case has drawn national attention because an upstanding citizen was tried and convicted of possessing unregistered ammunition for muzzleloader bullets, which are simply pieces of lead and copper. On Friday afternoon, I accompanied Mr. Witaschek and his wife, Bonnie, to Metropolitan Police Department headquarters to abide by the terms of his...

<p>The Daily Caller: A reporter has been detained by Capitol Hill police for trying to ask a question of Environmental Protection Agency administrator Gina McCarthy.</p> <p>Bloomberg BNA energy reporter Ari Natter tweeted about being detained.</p> <p>Natter was detained while covering the American Council On Renewable Energy conference, where McCarthy spoke. Also speaking at the conference was Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a staunch supporter of green energy who regularly takes the Senate floor to sound the alarm on global warming.</p>

Thousands of Bay Area workers will become eligible by Sept. 30 for a new commuter benefit that could save them hundreds of dollars a year if they take public transit or van pools to work. Employers of 50 of more full-time workers within the nine Bay Area counties must start offering employees at least one of four kinds of assistance for commute alternatives to driving alone. Companies that already offer a commuter benefit will not be required to expand their program, but they will have to file an annual report.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco opened on Wednesday an effort to force House Republicans to bring an immigration overhaul to a vote. Most observers think the effort is doomed. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a San Jose Democrat who is the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee’s immigration panel, spoke passionately on the floor about a potentially “truly historic” day, but so far it remains just that. President Obama likewise issued a statement encouraging the effort.

With less than a week left for customers to apply for insurance through the health care marketplaces, a poll released Wednesday finds that half of the people still without health coverage intend to remain uninsured. Five million people have signed up for insurance since the marketplaces created by the federal health law opened in October. The official deadline to sign up without facing a financial penalty is March 31, although federal officials told news organizations Tuesday that consumers who begin the process before then and have had trouble with the technology will an extension of several weeks to finish the...

In an argument that touched on medical science and moral philosophy, the Supreme Court on Tuesday wrestled with whether corporations may refuse to provide insurance coverage for contraception to their workers based on the religious beliefs of the corporations’ owners. --snip-- Hobby Lobby told the justices that it had no problem offering coverage for many forms of contraception, including condoms, diaphragms, sponges, several kinds of birth control pills and sterilization surgery. But drugs and devices that may prevent embryos from implanting in the womb are another matter, the company said; its owners believe those would make the company complicit in...

IRVING, TEXAS--Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were in Dallas on Monday for the inaugural Globalization of Higher Education Conference. Bush and Clinton spoke separately at the private event co-organized by Bush. According to the Associated Press (AP), the event offered a bipartisan twist for the nation's two dominant political families. Both spoke on education policy and the need to make higher education affordable and accessible across the globe. Both also were reported as chatting briefly off stage. According to AP, Bush said in his speech, "Higher education in America has a growing...

The assertion by many Connecticut gun owners that they will not comply with the State’s new requirement to register their weapons did not sit well with Governor Dannel Malloy (D). “What these people need to realize is that I’m serious,” Malloy declared. “They may chatter about the 4th Amendment all they want, but if they fail to comply I promise to use the full power of the State to enforce the law. They had the opportunity to make their case before we passed the registration requirement. They lost. We won.” “Possession of an unregistered firearm is now a felony in...

Grant Middle School workbook’s gun-rights description has some up in arms A workbook used by Grant Middle School that has generated controversy among gun-rights supporters won't be removed from the classroom. Jason Nevel Updated Mar 24, 2014 at 10:23 PM A workbook used by students at Grant Middle School that has generated controversy among gun-rights supporters has no political agenda and won't be removed from the classroom, Springfield interim Superintendent Bob Hill said Monday. Since the controversy surfaced online last week, Hill said, he's received a handful of calls and more than a dozen emails. Gun-rights supporters claim students at...

GENEVA (Reuters) - There has been no reverse in the trend of global warming and there is still consistent evidence for man-made climate change, the head of the U.N. World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said on Monday. A slow-down in the average pace of warming at the planet's surface this century has been cited by "climate skeptics" as evidence that climate change is not happening at the potentially catastrophic rate predicted by a U.N. panel of scientists. But U.N. weather agency chief Michel Jarraud said ocean temperatures, in particular, were rising fast, and extreme weather events, forecast by climate scientists, showed...

Stanford Report, March 22, 2014 Michelle Obama underscores the importance of global education and beams into Stanford from Beijing Speaking at the Stanford Center at Peking University in Beijing on Saturday, Michelle Obama said study abroad allows students to realize that countries all have a stake in each other's success. Following her remarks, she held a conversation with students on the Stanford campus via a high-tech videoconference. Michelle Obama promoted study abroad programs during a speech at the Stanford Center at Peking University in Beijing on Saturday, then encouraged Stanford and local high school students sitting in Palo Alto to...

To date, a reported 50,016 people have guaranteed the eventual confiscation of their firearms by obeying the “Assault Weapons” registration requirements of Connecticut’s new gun law. But according to a 2011 study commissioned by the Connecticut Office of Legislative Research it is estimated that more than 300,000 additional weapons have NOT been registered, their owners refusing to relinquish either their semi-auto rifles OR their liberty to Connecticut lawgivers. (Given recent record sales years that 300,000 could today be 400,000 or more.) So in spite of the threats of Connecticut’s left-wing politicos to imprison those with the courage to defy unconstitutional...

Today marks four years since President Obama consummated America’s decades-long dalliance with health care reform. The White House’s East Room was the venue for the ceremony that day, during which the president, a metallic blue tie around his neck and a light dusting of gray in his hair, applied his powerful signature in 22 clipped dashes — two pens per letter, one for each of his honored guests — to the Affordable Care Act, which we know as Obamacare, the law Republicans say, on this anniversary, will fuel another midterm election sweep. The legislation itself is massive, ground-breaking, and meaningful...

“No one has suffered more than the President over this thing,” said Vice-President Joe Biden commenting on the disastrous Affordable Care Act. “I know it will be hard for those who've lost coverage or seen their premiums skyrocket to grasp this. But these people have minor individual problems. The President has to face a rising tide of criticism and blame. He's not used to that. If anyone qualifies for sainthood it's him.” Talk show host Ellen Degeneres largely concurred in Biden's assessment arguing that “while there may be a few malcontents, I think the vast majority of Americans are truly...

WND EXCLUSIVE The 1 officer who stands between you and militarized police 'I can nullify any kind of unconstitutional law forced upon the people' The office of sheriff was created to address worries exactly like the rampant militarization of police forces in America, claim two sheriffs who have challenged elected officials in their states over what they believe are unconstitutional abuses of power. “Right now the threat to individual Americans from al-Qaida and other groups is nowhere near the threat we face from officials in our own country who are working at taking away our liberties,” Delaware Sheriff Jeff Christopher...

Nearly six months after the disastrous launch of Healthcare.gov a new glitch has come to light: Incorrect poverty-level guidelines are automatically telling what could be tens of thousands of eligible people they do not qualify for subsidized insurance. The error in the federal marketplace primarily affects households with incomes just above the poverty line in states like Pennsylvania that have not expanded Medicaid. The mistake raises the price of their insurance by thousands of dollars, making insurance so unaffordable many may just give up and go without. Some states chose to run their own marketplaces. It was unknown Thursday night...

One of the hallmarks of a totalitarian state is that there are so many laws and regulations that no one can possibly know what they are, let alone obey them. Thus everyone is a criminal, and only the despot’s discretion separates the solid citizen from the criminal. Unfortunately, the United States is rapidly approaching–if it has not already reached–this dystopian status. So Glenn Reynolds’s great column in USA Today should be a starting point for lots of conversations. Glenn offers several suggestions for how this situation might be remedied, which, again, are a starting point for discussion. But the real...

The police department at the University of California, Santa Barbara has released its official crime report concerning the professor who stole a graphic anti-abortion sign from two abortion protesters, then seemingly assaulted one of the protesters (a 16-year-old girl) and destroyed the sign. The professor is Mireille Miller-Young. She is several months pregnant. A large swath at the beginning of the report is redacted for reasons that are unclear. A few administrative bits are redacted at other points. However, most of the text remains uncensored. “In essence, Miller-Young told me that she felt ‘triggered’” “in a negative way” by graphic...

There are 456 “official” federal agencies, and many of these have bureaucracies within them. According to The Center for Small Government, just the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has 47 separate bureaucracies! Let’s say the average, for the sake of time, is 40. That’s 18,240 bureaucracies, and 700,000 (give or take) federal employees. There are 535 federal legislators in Congress who are elected to oversee, fund, and pass laws to regulate this morass. If we divided it up equally, that’s 42 bureaucracies per Congressman/woman, and 182 bureaucracies per Senator. Congress has roughly 200 committees to discuss all of these, and...