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For The Sixth Time In One Week, Man Shot At Gun Show

McCain: Immigration Reform Must Include Path To Citizenship

Arizona May Require Students To Recite Loyalty Oaths

Security

Former Top Military Officials Back Hagel’s Defense Secretary Bid

By Ben Armbruster posted from ThinkProgress Security on Jan 27, 2013 at 5:04 pm


Chuck Hagel received two new high profile endorsements on Sunday for his bid to be the next Secretary of Defense. Retired Air Force General Michael Hayden and retired Army General Stanley McChrystal said on CNN’s State of the Union that Hagel is a good choice to take over for outgoing Pentagon chief Leon Panetta.

Hayden, former National Security Agency head during the Bush administration and CIA Director in both the Bush and Obama administrations, said Hagel is someone “you could talk to” and “have an honest dialogue” with. When host Candy Crowley asked the former generals if they see “any red flags” that would disqualify Hagel, McChrystal, most recently the top allied commander in Afghanistan, said “no” while Hayden said, “not at all.”

CROWLEY: From what you know of Chuck Hagel…what sort of reception would he get from the military.

HAYDEN: I think he will be fine. I know Senator Hagel. He was on my oversight committee when I was in the intelligence community. He was a member, and this is not a universal condition, he was a member that you could talk to, have an honest dialogue, not necessarily disagree but on a personal basis, have a candid exchange of views. You could always speak with him and frankly given my time in uniform, that’s a tremendous attribute. So I actually think this will work out well.

Watch the clip:

The “neocon smear machine” and other well-financed right-wing groups are trying to derail Hagel’s Defense Secretary bid but the former Republican senator from Nebraska has received widespread, bipartisan support from former top foreign affairs and defense officials in recent weeks and key senators have said they would vote to confirm Hagel.

Health

Arizona Bill Requires Hospitals To Screen Immigration Status Of Uninsured Patients

By Rebecca Leber posted from ThinkProgress Health on Jan 27, 2013 at 2:18 pm

Hospitals would need to check the immigration status of uninsured patients under a new bill introduced by an Arizona lawmaker. Rep. Steve Smith’s (R) H.B. 2293 would require hospital staff to “reasonably confirm” patients’ status during check-in or treatment, and immediately report those who do not have the required papers to immigration officials.

Smith claimed it is a hospital’s civic duty to check immigration status:

“I would hope if you witnessed somebody who is not lawfully present in this country taking advantage of, getting, acquiring any benefit or social service or something that they’re not entitled to, or something they’re abusing or neglected, I would hope somebody would pick up the phone and go, ‘Maricopa police, Buckeye police, I think — I’m not sure — but I think this is happening.”’

The Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association has already rejected the attempt to turn hospitals into another front for immigration enforcement: “When does this begin or end?” a spokesman said. “What other industry should be screening their customers for citizenship verification?” The National Coalition for Immigrant Women’s Rights and National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health also called the measure “unconscionable” and legalized “harassment.” With roughly 19 percent of Arizona’s population lacking health insurance, the bill could deter many immigrants and their children from seeking care, as well as burden hospitals.

Economy

Paul Ryan Embraces Spending Cuts He Said Would Devastate The Country

By Igor Volsky posted from ThinkProgress Economy on Jan 27, 2013 at 1:30 pm

During an interview on Meet The Press on Sunday, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) predicted that the sequester cuts are “going to happen” and made no concrete proposals for how to avoid the reductions. The tone represents a sharp rhetorical and policy shift for the onetime GOP vice presidential nominee, who warned during the 2012 presidential campaign that the cuts would “devastate” the country and undermine job growth.

“I think the sequester is going to happen,” Ryan said, referring to the $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts to the Pentagon and other government agencies that will go into effect unless Congress approves offsets. He charged that Democrats rejected the GOP’s replacement legislation — the bill cut the food-stamp program, slashed Medicaid, undermined funding for the Affordable Care Act and disaster relief — and failed to produce their own alternatives:

RYAN: If Mitt Romney and I won the election, they would not have happened. You know why? Because we would have gone and worked with Democrats and Republicans in Congress to actually put the budget on a path to balance and would have saved defense. So where are we now? I think the sequester is going to happen because that $1.2 trillion in spending cuts, we can’t lose those spending cuts. [...] But we think these sequesters will happen because the Democrats have opposed our efforts to replace those cuts with others and they’ve offered no alternatives.

In fact, Democrats introduced offsets in the hopes of reaching a grand bargain that could turn off the sequester and avoid the so-called fiscal cliff.

Days before House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) abandoned negotiations with President Obama to advance his failed Plan B, the White House paired a tax increase on the richest Americans with spending cuts of $1.22 trillion over 10 years, including “adopting a new measure of inflation that slows the growth of government benefits, especially Social Security.” Despite Ryan’s claims, the Democrats’ plan contained: $400 billion in savings “from federal health care programs; $200 billion from other so-called mandatory programs, like farm price supports, not subject to Congress’s annual spending bills; $100 billion from military spending; and $100 billion from domestic programs under Congress’s annual discretion.”

Ryan also reiterated that Republicans won’t support additional revenues to turn off the sequester, noting that the American Taxpayer Relief Act — the last minute law that averted the fiscal cliff — included an increase in taxes on couples making more than $450,000 annually and singles making more than $400,000. “The point is, though, the president got his additional revenues. So that’s behind us,” Ryan said on Sunday.

The comments represent another retreat for Ryan, who backed Mitt Romney’s proposal to raise revenues by eliminating tax loopholes and deductions for the wealthiest Americans. Those reforms were not included in the American Taxpayer Relief Act and could be part of a package that reforms tax breaks for high-income individuals and corporations, generating “$1 trillion in potential savings over 10 years” — more than enough to replace the sequester.

Justice

Gun Industry Aims To Sell Youth On Assault Weapons

By Josh Israel posted from ThinkProgress Justice on Jan 27, 2013 at 12:40 pm

Responding to Americans’ declining interest in shooting sports, gun manufacturers are developing programs to market their products to younger children. The National Shooting Sports Foundation trade association and the industry-funded National Rifle Association spend millions of dollars annually to recruit kids as gun enthusiasts. And those efforts increasingly focus on pushing semi-automatic assault weapons, including the very model used by the shooter in the Newtown, Connecticut tragedy.

The New York Times reports:

The pages of Junior Shooters, an industry-supported magazine that seeks to get children involved in the recreational use of firearms, once featured a smiling 15-year-old girl clutching a semiautomatic rifle. At the end of an accompanying article that extolled target shooting with a Bushmaster AR-15 — an advertisement elsewhere in the magazine directed readers to a coupon for buying one — the author encouraged youngsters to share the article with a parent.

“Who knows?” it said. “Maybe you’ll find a Bushmaster AR-15 under your tree some frosty Christmas morning!”

The industry’s youth-marketing effort is backed by extensive social research and is carried out by an array of nonprofit groups financed by the gun industry, an examination by The New York Times found. The campaign picked up steam about five years ago with the completion of a major study that urged a stronger emphasis on the “recruitment and retention” of new hunters and target shooters.

Federal law prohibits the sale of rifles to those under age 18. But through programs at Boy Scout camps and 4-H clubs, the NRA trains children on how to safely shoot single-shot rifles. And, according to the report: “Newer initiatives by other organizations go further, seeking to introduce children to high-powered rifles and handguns while invoking the same rationale of those older, more traditional programs: that firearms can teach ‘life skills’ like responsibility, ethics and citizenship.”
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Politics

McCain: Comprehensive Immigration Reform Must Include Path To Citizenship

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Jan 27, 2013 at 11:30 am

Senator John McCain (R-AZ) confirmed on Sunday morning that he that he and a bipartisan group of senators will roll out a comprehensive immigration reform effort in Congress. Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” McCain, who has previously fluctuated on his support of a full path to citizenship, stressed that any reform bill must include such a measure, and that the effort must be done in one piece of all-encompassing legislation.

His support for the bill is a pivot from earlier comments that citizenship for undocumented immigrants would be “amnesty.” But McCain defended his shift by pointing out how citizenship for Latinos would benefit the Republican party, and by questioning what would otherwise happen to those undocumented people “living in the shadows”:

MARTHA RADDATZ (HOST): Citizenship is obviously the most controversial aspect for some of your Republican colleagues, and you’ve gone back and forth. In 2005 you were for it. By 2010 you wanted border security first and, quote, certainly no amnesty, so you’re solidly behind a pathway to citizenship. How do you convince some of those Republicans who are not behind it?

MCCAIN: Well, first of all, I’ve always been for border security. I mean, there are citizens in my state who do not live in a secure environment.[...]

RADDATZ: So how do you convince Republicans about the path to citizenship?

MCCAIN: Well, look, I’ll give you a little straight talk. Look at the last election. Look at the last election. We are losing dramatically the Hispanic vote, which we think should be ours for a variety of reasons, and we’ve got to understand that. Second of all, we can’t go on forever with 11 million people living in this country in the shadows in an illegal status. We cannot forever have children who were brought here by their parents when they were small children to live in the shadows, as well. So I think the time is right.

McCain said that Sens. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Lindsay Graham (R-SC), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and others will be working on the legislation. The exact outline of what will be in the bill is unclear, but McCain said the Senators will announce its key “principles” this week.

President Obama, for his part, will be traveling to Las Vegas on Tuesday to announce his own push for immigration reform. His plan will follow an immigration reform blueprint the administration released last year. It includes a path to citizenship, and Obama has stressed that a comprehensive immigration bill will be “a top priority” in his second term.

Politics

Before Calling 911, Sheriff Tells Residents To Get ‘In The Game’ With A Gun

By Rebecca Leber on Jan 27, 2013 at 10:43 am

Wisconsin County Sheriff David Clarke is facing backlash for telling Milwaukee, Wisconsin residents to get a gun for emergencies, rather than call 911. In a radio ad, Clarke claims personal and public safety is no longer a “spectator sport,” and urges civilians to “get in the game” before police arrive to a scene:

I’m Sheriff David Clarke, and I want to talk to you about something personal…your safety. It’s no longer a spectator sport; I need you in the game, but are you ready?

With officers laid-off and furloughed, simply calling 9-1-1 and waiting is no longer your best option. You can beg for mercy from a violent criminal, hide under the bed, or you can fight back; but are you prepared? Consider taking a certified safety course in handling a firearm so you can defend yourself until we get there. You have a duty to protect yourself and your family. We’re partners now. Can I count on you?

Clarke told the Associated Press he chose to get “creative” about facing “fewer and fewer resources” in his department. “After sitting down and thinking about this, I’m thinking ‘Hey, I’ve got an untapped reserve over here, and it’s the public,’” he said.

While it is true police departments have thinned — thanks to Republican public sector budget cuts — Clarke has an absurd expectation that citizens could act as interim police officers, with minimal firearm training. Armed citizens usually do not stop violent crime, and their intervention only increases the danger and bloodshed, “given that civilian shooters are less likely to hit their targets than police in these circumstances.”

Politics

Democratic Senator: ‘We Do Have Support’ For An Assault Weapons Ban

By Igor Volsky on Jan 27, 2013 at 10:02 am

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) pledged to include an assault weapons ban in any legislation designed to improve gun safety and insisted, during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, that “we do have support” for such a provision.

The California Democrat, who introduced legislation banning 150 assault weapons earlier this week, conceded that the ban would present an “uphill fight,” but said that Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has promised that she could introduce the proposal as an amendment should it not be included in the comprehensive gun safety bill that advances to the Senate floor:

FEINSTEIN: This has been an uphill fight. This has never been easy. This is the hardest of the hard. Now, will it only be assault weapons? No. Most likely there will be a package put together. If assault weapons is left out of the package and I’m a member of the Judiciary number two in seniority. I’ve been assured by the Majority Leader I will be able to do it as an amendment on the floor. Which is the way I did it in 1993. So that doesn’t particularly bother me. [...]

Do military style assault weapons belong on the streets of our cities? And the answer, according to the United States Conference of Mayors, according to the major chiefs of police, according to the largest police organization in the world, is absolutely no. So we do have support. Don’t mistake it.

Feinstein attributed the tepid support for a ban in the Senate to the National Rifle Association, which she called “venal” and said will come after Senators and “put large amounts of money together to defeat you.”

The senator also agreed that armed security may help prevent school shootings, noting that “one-third of the schools in America today have school guards.” But, she insisted, “having school guards really isn’t the whole answer. The more you have these weapons, these military style weapons that with the single stock of the AR-15 can be made fully automatic, the minute you have it in the Sandy Hook killer’s hands, you have a devastating weapon.”

Justice

For The Sixth Time In One Week, Man Shot At Gun Show

By Ian Millhiser posted from ThinkProgress Justice on Jan 26, 2013 at 5:30 pm


Gun activists designated last Saturday “Gun Appreciation Day” in an attempt to highlight their opposition to gun safety laws. The PR stunt proved to be more of an embarrassment, however, when 5 people were shot at 3 different gun shows on Gun Appreciation Day. On Friday afternoon, an Iowa gun dealer closed out the week by becoming the sixth person shot at a gun show. The man claims he was “showing off a .25 caliber pistol he thought was unloaded when he slid the action of the gun.” The gun was not unloaded, and a bullet went through his left palm.

After this incident, police found a second loaded weapon on the wounded gun dealer’s table.

[HT: David Waldman]

Alyssa

How To Convince The NRA That Assault Weapons, Not The Media, Are Responsible For Gun Massacres

By Igor Volsky posted from ThinkProgress Alyssa on Jan 26, 2013 at 1:00 pm

Stephen King — best selling author of the very kind of violent books that gun advocates say contribute to gun violence — has penned Guns, a 25-page essay dismissing their criticism, while calling for universal background checks for gun purchases, and a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

A self-described “blue-state American” who also owns guns, King is no stranger to how individuals can and do turn to art as inspiration for violence. During the 1990s, no fewer than four shooters read Rage — an early work King wrote in high school years and published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman years later — entered their high schools with guns, held students and teachers hostage, and in some cases killed them. The book chronicles how Charlie Decker, a troubled high school student with a “domineering father,” brought a gun to school, killed his algebra teacher, and held his class hostage — only to see his classmates experience a “psychological inversion” and come to his defense.

After copies of Rage were discovered in the possession of multiple high school shooters, King voluntarily pulled the book from publication. He did so not because the thin tome inspired would-be killers to commit unspeakable carnage; rather it acted “as a possible accelerant” for boys who spent time in psych wards pondering suicide or endured the kind of bullying that results in severe medical paranoia. These boys found a “soul brother” in Decker. He gave them “blueprints to express their hate and rage” and for that, King decided, he “had to go.” “You don’t leave a can of gasoline where a boy with firebug tendencies can lay hands on it,” the author writes in Guns.

But while art that taps into the heart of a troubled soul can “accelerate” violence, there is little evidence that it causes it. Those arguments, often advanced by conservative lawmakers with A ratings from the National Rifle Association — and the NRA itself — “throw popular culture into the debate in the hopes that it’ll be distracting chum to piranhas hungry for scapegoats but reluctant to fight difficult battles to make America safer.” They also avoid any examination of the “state of our own popular culture and the profound fears about justice, disempowerment, and the state of civil society that are reflected in it.”
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Justice

Republicans’ Effort To Rig Electoral College Gets National Backing

By Scott Keyes posted from ThinkProgress Justice on Jan 26, 2013 at 11:50 am

Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell (R), who was the chief elections officer when the state experienced massive voting problems in 2004, is planning to lead a national effort to rig the electoral college in favor of the 2016 Republican presidential candidate.

Republicans who hold power in states that have voted Democratic in the last few presidential contests, including Virginia and Pennsylvania, are considering a change to their apportionment of electoral votes. Instead of a winner-take-all system for the state, electoral votes would be doled out by congressional district, using highly-gerrymandered maps. The result is that a state like Pennsylvania, which voted for President Obama by more than 5 percent in 2012, would have given most of its electoral votes to Mitt Romney.

That plan is now receiving national backing, thanks to Blackwell and GOP operative Jordan Gehrke. The two men detailed their effort in an interview with the Atlantic and conceded that the effort could make it easier for Republicans to win the White House:

ATLANTIC: You are a Republican operative, though. And it’s Republican legislators who are pushing this in all the states where it’s come up so far. You can claim this is about policy, but doesn’t it really make it easier for Republicans to win presidential elections?

BLACKWELL & GEHRKE: That could be a byproduct, depending on who drew the lines last and who’s running – a lot of different things. What it’s really about is making sure that more people in more congressional districts get attention.

Though Blackwell and Gehrke argued that allocating electoral votes by congressional district is more representative, that doesn’t mean they support the much simpler, fairer system of a national popular vote. “Abolishing the electoral college is very difficult to do,” they claimed.

What’s both true and sad, though, is that rigging the system to ensure the Republican candidate wins, no matter how Americans actually vote, is far easier to accomplish in Republican-controlled states.

Justice

Arizona Bills Require Public School Students To Recite Loyalty Oaths

By Igor Volsky posted from ThinkProgress Justice on Jan 26, 2013 at 10:45 am

Public high school students in Arizona will have to “recite an oath supporting the U.S. Constitution” to receive a graduation diploma, if a new bill introduced in the new session of the state legislature is passed and signed into law. The measure, House Bill 2467, was offered by Rep. Bob Thorpe (R), a freshman tea party members who also backs a bill preventing state enforcement of federally enacted gun safety laws. Here is the text of HB 2467:

As written, the bill does not exempt atheist students or those of different faiths from the requirement, though Thorpe has pledged to amend the measure. “In that we had a tight deadline for dropping our bills, I was not able to update the language,” he wrote in an e-mail to the Arizona Republic. “Even though I want to encourage all of our students to understand and respect our Constitution and constitutional form of government, I do not want to create a requirement that students or parents may feel uncomfortable with.”

A separate measure introduced by Thorpe’s colleague would also “require all students in first through 12th grades” “to say the pledge of allegiance each day.” Currently, “schools must set aside time for the pledge each day, but students may choose whether to participate.”

Constitutional experts warn that both proposals are unconstitutional. As American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona Public Policy Director Anjali Abraham explained, “You can’t require students to attend school … and then require them to either pledge allegiance to the flag or swear this loyalty oath in order to graduate. It’s a violation of the First Amendment.”

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Security

The First Prison Sentence Related To Gitmo Torture Goes To Someone Who Spoke Out Against It

By Andrea Peterson posted from ThinkProgress Security on Jan 26, 2013 at 9:22 am

Former CIA agent John C. Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 months in prison

Ex-CIA officer John C. Kiriakou became the first person to be sentenced to prison for issues related to torture at Guantanamo Bay on Friday– because he talked about, but did not participate in, “enhanced interrogation” techniques. Kiriakou pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act in October for revealing the name of a former operative involved the Bush era’s brutal interrogation of detainees at Guantanamo to a reporter.

Kiriakou worked as a CIA operative for more than two decades and led a March 2002 raid that captured high-ranking Al Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah. He was also a vocal torture opponent who revealed his knowledge of U.S. enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, in an ABC interview in 2007. A confidential 2004 International Committee of the Red Cross report stated that the intentional physical and psychological harm done to detainees at Guantanamo was “tantamount to torture.” While several soldiers involved in the Abu Graib prison scandal were prosecuted and sentenced, the conviction of the only officer court-martialed was thrown out in 2008, and no one has ever been prosecuted for abuse at Guantanamo Bay. Leonie M. Brinkema, the judge who sentenced Kiriakou called his punishment “way too light.”

Kiriakou is the first ever CIA agent to be prosecuted under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, and the first successful conviction under the statute in 27 years. His case continues a trend of harsh, but selective, crackdowns on whistle-blowers and intelligence leaks by the Obama administration; The Justice Department has prosecuted more government officials for alleged leaks under the World War I-era Espionage Act under Attorney General Eric Holder than under all his predecessors combined.

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