The National Rifle Association is rolling out what it calls "the big guns" this week to push back on the growing call for gun control. Conservative commentator Oliver North, rocker Ted Nugent, NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre, NRA President David Keene and 2012 Olympic gold medal skeet shooter Kim Rhode will all take to the airwaves for what the NRA is calling a "#Gunversation" on The Sportsman Channel, a digital-tier cable channel focused on the outdoors. The prominent gun rights voices will be appearing on NRANEWS Cam & Co., a show sponsored by the NRA. Some have criticized the NRA for relying on men like Nugent and LaPierre -- who are often politically divisive -- to make their case. Nevertheless, the men continue to be heralded in the gun rights community. "Host Cam Edwards...

Bill O'Reilly implied that President Obama is responsible for a 75 percent increase in federal spending over the past decade. But federal spending has increased only 18.8 percent under Obama -- and it increased 66 percent under President George W. Bush. On his Fox program, O'Reilly focused his opening segment on how history will "evaluate President Obama." He aired the following chart on the change in federal spending between 2003 and 2013: O'Reilly went on to claim that the increase in spending has not benefited the economy, but was implemented by Obama in an attempt to appeal to Hispanic voters. Pointing to a recent Pew Research Center poll question on the role of the federal government, O'Reilly concluded, "That's why President Obama is spending the money, because he knows that a coali...

Last April, high school student Amber Hatcher announced she would be participating in the National Day of Silence, a nationwide protest to raise awareness about anti-LGBT bullying, and sought permission in advance from her school administrators in Desoto County, Florida. Her principal threatened “ramifications” if she participated and even called her parents suggesting they keep her home because there “would be consequences.” Lambda Legal reached out to the school informing administrators of students’ rights, but they chose not to respond, instead emailing teachers to notify the principal if anybody was participating. Amber followed through, and was subsequently suspended for the day. Lambda Legal has now filed suit against the school on Amber’s behalf. The complaint includes the full text...

Steven Brooks, a Democratic state lawmaker in Nevada, wanted a gun. So last Thursday, the 40-year-old father of four went to a sporting goods store in Sparks, Nev. and attempted to buy one. That triggered a background check. And that background check has triggered headlines. But then, Brooks has been in headlines for weeks. Media outlets in Nevada have been covering Brooks heavily because of his recent run of troubling behavior, which began in late January, just days before he was sworn in to his second term in the Nevada Assembly. "I've had a month of hell," Brooks told The Las Vegas Review-Journal last month, after his first arrest of 2013, but before his second one, which occurred earlier this month. "I had the worst month I had in all my life and the new year just started." Bro...

Scores of undocumented immigrants are being released from federal detention facilities thanks to looming sequester cuts expected to go into effect at the end of the week. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has "reviewed several hundred cases and placed these individuals on methods of supervision less costly than detention," a spokeswoman for ICE, Barbara Gonzales, told TPM. According to a report in the Tucson Daily Star, more than 100 detainees had already been let go from Arizona's Eloy Detention Center alone. "In order to make the best use of our limited detention resources in the current fiscal climate and to manage our detention population under current congressionally mandated levels, ICE has directed field offices to review the detained population to ensure it is in line wi...

By Chris Mooney and Julia Whitty The latest cover story of Mother Jones magazine — and, relatedly, the latest Climate Desk Live briefing, occurring this Wednesday in D.C. — are focused on one of the “good news” energy stories that we don’t hear often enough: How the U.S. military in general, and particularly the Navy, are taking the energy challenge head-on for good, strategic reasons. The piece begins, memorably enough, with environmental correspondent Julia Whitty’s gut-tightening high speed landing on-board the USS Nimitz. A 1,092 foot aircraft carrier, the Nimitz was involved last summer in the “Great Green Fleet” demonstration, in which five ships and 71 aircraft were operated using biofuel blends or nuclear power. As Whitty reports, the Defense Department uses over 12 million gallons...

While answering constituents’ phone calls on C-SPAN Tuesday morning, Rep. Reid Ribble (R-WI) — who is a member of the influential House Budget Committee — bucked his party’s usual line on public health care entitlements by praising the idea of allowing Americans aged 55 and older to buy into the public Medicare program for seniors. When the Wisconsin caller asked Ribble about the reform proposal — commonly referred to as a “Medicare buy-in” — for Americans between the ages of 55 and 64, Ribble complimented the idea and asserted that the U.S. must engage in a robust and similarly innovative debate over lowering health care costs: CALLER: Good morning. For Medicare, why can’t instead of raising the age, let people buy in at 55, at $450 a month, and then go back to $100 [a month], approxima...

Congressional Republicans have taken every opportunity to gum up the implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. They have denied regulators the funds needed to finalize the law’s rules, leading to huge delays. And the GOP is about to receive a hand from the so-called “sequester,” budge cuts scheduled to take effect at the end of the week. As The Hill reported, both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, regulators charged with large responsibilities under the law, will see hefty reductions in funding: The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) $1.3 billion budget would fall by $108 million, while the CFTC would take a $17 million haircut to its $205 million budget. The OMB’s report also states that the new Consumer Financial Pro...

From the February 26 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:Previously: O'Reilly, Ingraham Criticize "Dopey Parents" For Supporting Their Transgender Son Fox Hosts Mock, Laugh At Transgender Inmate's Appearance O'Reilly On Transgender Man's Pregnancy: "Imagine A Poor Kid Getting Born Into That Family" Original link

Tweet Detroit residents attend a job fair in 2009. Average Americans have lost nearly 40 percent of their wealth. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya.) Editor’s Note: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here. The media is going sequester 24-7. Anyone who hasn’t been paying attention to the across-the-board spending cuts about to hit this Friday is about to have little choice. The brouhaha about the austerity bomb is drowning out any attention to what is actually going on in the economy—which is supposedly the point of the whole debate. The stark reality is the economy is still in trouble and Americans are still hurting. The economy contracted last quarter, even be...

By Shiva Polefka, Michael Conathan, and Kiley Kroh In November 2012, BP settled the Justice Department’s criminal case against it in the wake of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, agreeing to pay $4.5 billion in fines and admit it was guilty of 11 counts of manslaughter. But that 10-figure deal was just the tip of the iceberg. Yesterday, the civil trial to assess BP’s violations of the U.S. Clean Water Act began in New Orleans, a process that will end with additional fines that could exceed four times that amount. The civil trial will determine responsibility for an unprecedented environmental disaster, in which BP’s high-pressure Macondo well ruptured and discharged nearly 5 billion gallons of crude oil in to the Gulf of Mexico — as well as the amount of fines the company must pay t...

The National Organization for Marriage is once again exercising its muscle in order to try to get its way, promising $500,000 to campaign against Republicans who support marriage equality in Minnesota and support Democrats who oppose it. NOM claimed victory for this tactic in New York, even though only one of the four candidates they campaigned against was actually replaced by someone who agrees with their position. In a press release announcing the commitment to bullying, NOM’s Brian Brown specifically called out Sen. Branden Petersen (R) for endorsing the marriage equality effort, claiming that the issue is all about protecting children: BROWN: Republicans like Branden Petersen don’t realize that not only is voting to redefine marriage a terrible policy, it is also a career-ending vote f...

Some words and symbols are so commonplace it seems impossible a company could claim exclusive rights to them. Christianity’s central figure might be one of them. But according to the U.S. Patent And Trademark Office, Jesus Jeans has owned the word “Jesus” since 2007. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Italian company owned by BasicNet has fended off similarly named clothing startups ever since, though it is somewhat more charitable to churches. The Wall Street Journal’s Jacob Gersham profiles how Jesus Jeans protects its original image: Before taking on Jesus Surfed, Jesus Jeans objected to “Jesus First,” “Sweet Jesus,” and “Jesus Couture,” among others, which abandoned their trademark efforts. In some cases, when met with resistance, Jesus Jeans warned that it could sue for damag...

Indiana lawmakers sparked controversy last week when they proposed a forced ultrasound bill that would go even further than similar measures in states across the country: it would require women to undergo two potentially invasive ultrasounds, both before and after taking the RU-486 abortion pill. State lawmakers are now walking that back, conceding that the legislation doesn’t need to stipulate a second ultrasound — but the first ultrasound requirement remains in place as the full Senate prepares to vote on the legislation on Tuesday. Indiana senators approved the revision by a unanimous voice vote. The state lawmakers acknowledged that medical professionals themselves should be able to make the decisions about what type of tests are best for their patients, and requiring doctors to perfor...

Conservative media are parroting a Republican claim that a federal report says health care reform increases the long-term deficit. In fact, the report says that the deficit would only increase if cost containment measures in the bill were phased out over time, and found that the deficit would decrease if those measures were maintained.GOP Sen. Sessions: Federal Report Says Health Care Law Adds $6.2 Trillion To Long-Term Deficit The Hill: Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) "Said A New Government Report Shows" The Affordable Care Act "Will Add $6.2 Trillion To The Deficit Over The Next 75 Years." The Hill reported: "The Senate Budget Committee's top Republican said a new government report shows that President Obama's healthcare law will add $6.2 trillion t...

If you get your internet through Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Cablevision or Time Warner, and you’re still downloading music, television, or movies without paying them, you may start feeling something in addition to your guilt. In collaboration with the Center for Copyright Information, a group that includes both those internet service providers, the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America, Independent Film and Television Alliance, and the American Association of Independent Music, the companies will let you know they’re watching what you’re up to: As part of what’s known as the “six strikes” system, the ISPs will deliver to consumers a graduated series of six messages that starts with a warning and ends with some sort of action…While the first t...

Talk about lowering the bar to can't-miss depths. In its Sunday, page-one profile of partisan "provocateur" and Free Beacon founder Michael Goldfarb, the New York Times pointed to a report the right-wing site published this month, which raised questions about a speech Chuck Hagel gave in 2007. Free Beacon claimed Hagel had called the State Department "an adjunct to the Israeli foreign minister's office." The report represented yet another missile fired by the sprawling, well-funded, far-right smear campaign to obstruct Hagel's nomination as Secretary of Defense. (A campaign that seems destined to fail, by the way.) Writing up Goldfarb's supposed successes, the Times treated the Hagel report as a singular Free Beacon victory. (Sen. Lindsey Graham mentioned it on the floor of the Senate!) E...

Barring a last minute Congressional compromise, $85 billion in automatic across-the-board cuts will go into effect in the next 72 hours as a result of the sequester mechanism included in the 2011 Budget Control Act. Republicans — many of whom voted for the BCA and have for years championed deep spending reductions — are hoping to blame the Democrats and President Obama for the consequences of the cuts, claiming that if “bad things” happen as a result of sequester, “it’s because [Obama] wants them to.” As the nation moves closer to the March 1 deadline, here is your guide to the GOP spin on the sequester: 1. We need spending cuts to get the economy going. The GOP claims that government spending is out of control and reason that reducing spending would spur greater economic growth. But go...

National Rifle Association News host Cam Edwards has taken on a media critic role to allege that news reports linking firearms to public safety concerns are inaccurate. The series of rebuttals offered by Edwards on his show Cam & Company, however, are rife with outright falsehoods and are debunked by peer reviewed research. In five recent "Media Misinformation" segments, Edwards...  ...cited the long-debunked research of criminologist Gary Kleck to claim that up to 2.5 million defensive gun uses occur each year while also pushing the false claim that loosening concealed gun carry laws reduces crime. ...falsely claimed that the United States ranks 28th among industrialized nations in terms of gun homicide rate when the U.S. actually ranks first in a more compa...

The top ad was the original ad Bloomberg put out against Halvorson and then someone got them to alter it in a way that forced Toi Hutchinson out of the race. This is it:Technically, it's just a primary to pick the Democratic nominee to replace Jesse Jackson, Jr. But in a district where Jackson won reelection-- without even campaigning-- with 181,067 votes (63%) against a Republican opponent who got 67,396 votes (23%) and where Obama took 80.7% of the vote in November, the primary is the real contest. Whomever wins today will be the next Member of Congress for this Southland district. Blue America endorsed state Senator Toi Hutchinson primarily because she seemed like the strongest candidate who could beat self-described conservative Debbie Halvorson-- and, most important, not splinter the ...

From the February 26, 2013 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends: Original link

From the February 26 edition of Fox News' Fox and Friends:Previously: Conservative Media Ignore Obama's Sequester Plan Jay Sekulow Raises Idea Of Impeachment "If The President Lied" About Benghazi Right-Wing Media React To Obama's Re-Election: War, Impeachment, Revolution Original link

In a Supreme Court filing Monday Justice Sonia Sotomayor shown a spotlight on the government's mismanagement of a Texas drug case when she denounced the racially charged remarks of an assistant U.S. attorney as "an affront to the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection of the laws." The lawyer's conduct was referred to the Office of Professional Responsibility at the Justice Department, TPM has learned, but what actions were taken against the attorney for those remarks -- if any -- are unclear. The remarks in question came during the March 2011 trial of Bongani Charles Calhoun, a black man who was convicted on drug conspiracy charges after his companions on a road trip attempted to purchase cocaine from dealers who turned out to be undercover agents from the Drug Enforcement Age...

When the Supreme Court hears oral arguments Wednesday on the Voting Rights Act, opponents will argue that a centerpiece of the law aimed at letting the federal government proactively thwart attempts at voter discrimination has outlived its validity. "The only reason Section 5 was originally justified and upheld by the courts was because of Jim Crow -- the unusual circumstances at the time in terms of voter disenfranchisement," Ilya Shapiro, the editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review who filed an amicus brief in the case, told TPM. "I don't think there's a way to justify Section 5 anymore." Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act requires state and local governments across 16 states -- mostly in the South -- to seek preclearance from the Justice Department or a federal court before m...

Republican Gov. Rick Scott's announcement last week that he supports the Medicaid expansion in Florida may not be enough to seal the deal. That's because it still needs budget approval from the overwhelmingly Republican legislature, which has majorities of 28-12 in the Senate and 74-46 in the House, and is wary of going along with one of the key provisions of "Obamacare." Florida's House Speaker Will Weatherford (R) told National Review he's "personally skeptical that this inflexible law will improve the quality of health care in our state and [e]nsure our long-term financial stability." He said the legislature, not the governor, will have the final word. Democrats are taking the threat seriously. "I'd say this threat from leadership is credible," a senior Florida Democratic offici...

By Agence France-PresseTuesday, February 26, 2013 4:31 EST   The US State Department, still mourning the loss of its diplomats in a bloody attack on a mission in Libya, Monday cheered the Oscar win for “Argo” based on a true life tale of diplomatic bravery. “I think we all were excited to see it win,” deputy acting spokesman Patrick Ventrell told journalists of Ben Affleck’s film which picked up the coveted best picture award at the Oscars on Sunday night. The movie tel...

By Agence France-PresseTuesday, February 26, 2013 4:26 EST   The estranged wife of a New York policeman sobbed as she testified Monday that her husband, who is accused of plotting to kidnap and cannibalize women, went online to discuss torturing and killing her. Kathleen Mangan-Valle, 27, was the star witness for the prosecution in a trial that opened with her telling the jury that Gilberto Valle had a desire to “cannibalize human flesh.” The allegations are so gruesome...

By Agence France-PresseTuesday, February 26, 2013 4:23 EST   Fast food giant KFC has cut more than 1,000 farms from its supplier network in China to ensure food safety after a scandal over tainted chicken hurt sales in the key market last year. The issue came to light when China’s commercial hub of Shanghai and the northern province of Shanxi said in December that they were investigating KFC suppliers over claims of high levels of antibiotics in chicken. The food scare ...

Fox News is using a Massachusetts town to suggest that wind turbines cause "devastating" health problems. However, multiple studies have found no evidence that wind turbines are associated with health problems. In late January, two wind turbines built in Falmouth, Massachusetts, were targeted for removal due to noise and supposedly related health concerns sometimes referred to as "wind turbine syndrome." Tuesday, Fox News' America's Newsroom covered the local community's upcoming decision, saying that residents claim to have experienced "devastating" health impacts: But Fox News failed to note that "wind turbine syndrome" has not been substantiated. A 2012 panel of independent physicians and scientists convened by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection concluded&nbs...

By Agence France-PresseTuesday, February 26, 2013 4:11 EST   Two US sailors Tuesday admitted raping a Japanese woman in Okinawa last October, news reports said, in a case that generated huge anti-American anger on the strategically vital island. Skyler Dozierwalker, 23, and Christopher Browning, 24, attacked the woman in central Okinawa during a brief trip to the semi-tropical island chain. Dozierwalker told Naha District Court he committed the crime, while Browning als...