Lawmakers want to ensure plastic and 3-D
printed guns, such as the "Liberator" pistol pictured above, are
regulated and detectable."
Democrats have tried in vain in 2013 to get House Republicans
to pass gun control measures they believe would curb violence such as
the massacre in Newtown, Conn. Tuesday, however, gun control legislation
which has a long record of bipartisan support and is sponsored by a
House Republican with an "A" rating from the National Rifle Association,
is up for consideration.
The Undetectable Firearms Act will be voted on under a suspension of
the rules, which means it will need a two-thirds majority to pass. Its
lead sponsor is Rep. Howard Coble, R-N.C., a veteran lawmaker who
represents portions of rural North Carolina. His bill would extend a law
that bans the sale of firearms that can go undetected in a metal
detector.
The law has been a source of bipartisan compromise in Congress since
the Reagan administration. It was a forward-looking bill in 1988 when it
was first authorized. Then it was aimed at ensuring large-scale gun
manufacturers couldn't produce or sell weapons that could slyly bypass
security checkpoints undetected. Now, in an era when consumers with a
3-D printer could make plastic guns at home, the law may have wider
implications.
The vote in the House is expected less than a week before the current
version of the legislation expires. The Senate, however, has yet to act
and will be out of session until Monday.
Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Bill Nelson,
D-Fla., brought a similar bill up for a vote before leaving for the
Thanksgiving holiday, but Republicans in the Senate objected. Democrats
in the Senate warn that the rapid advance in 3-D printing technologies
could produce more undetectable guns and more mass shootings.
House Passes Ban On Plastic Guns As Senate Eyes Broader Reforms
Posted: 12/03/2013 5:14 pm EST | Updated: 12/04/2013 11:19 am EST
WASHINGTON -- Something bizarre happened in the House of
Representatives on Tuesday: Republicans quietly passed gun control
legislation.
The bill, which renews the 1988 Undetectable Firearms Act, faced so
little opposition in the House that it was only debated for 10 minutes
and passed on a voice vote. It's the only gun-related measure to get a
House vote since Democrats launched a major push for action on gun
violence in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting late
last year.
Tuesday's vote doesn't implement new gun laws -- it just extends a
current one banning guns that don't contain enough metal to trigger
X-ray machines or metal detectors. The law was originally signed by
President Ronald Reagan and was renewed by Presidents Bill Clinton and
George W. Bush, passing Congress with broad bipartisan support each
time. It is currently scheduled to expire on Dec. 9.
While the House didn't make any changes to the law, Senate Democrats
are poised to try to expand it. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) will put
forward a bill on Monday, the same day the law is set to expire,
containing a provision targeting plastic guns made with 3-D printing
technology. Specifically, his bill would require that guns contain a
piece of metal that is intrinsic to its operation, such as in the barrel
or the trigger handle, rather than an extraneous piece that could be
removed before a gun is put through a metal detector.
Published time: August 06, 2013 16:17 Edited time: August 07, 2013 14:14
Someone in the Senate isn’t a fan of Edward Snowden, and they’re using Wikipedia to get their point across.
The
Wikipedia page for the man responsible for leaking classified National
Security Agency files to the media has been updated hundreds of times
since he started sharing sensitive documents in early June, but one of
those revisions — and a questionable one at that — comes courtesy of
someone in the United States Senate.
On Friday, someone logged
into Wikipedia and changed a line in Snowden’s biography from "American
dissident” to "American traitor.” Joe Klock at The Daily Dot website was
the first one to report on the edit, and quickly noticed that the
revision was made from a computer connected to the Internet from within
the walls of a US Senate building.
The word change only stayed on the Snowden page for around one minute, but it still managed to create quite a stir.
On
a discussion page for the entry, one Wikipedia editor confirmed that
the change was made by someone with access to a Senate computer.
“The
edit was made by this IP and the IP does belong to the US Senate. The
edit was reverted within 1 minute due to the fact that it does not
reflect a neutral point of view which is one of the Five Pillars that
governs how Wikipedia operates. In that way, Wikipedia not only
performed as it should but it did so incredibly quickly,” the post reads.
Nailing
the perpetrator responsible for that single edit will likely be task
all too impossible, though. While the IP address behind the change is
indeed registered to the Senate, it isn’t restricted to one particular
user.
“If the agency or facility uses proxy servers, this IP address may represent many users at many personal computers or devices,” the discussion page acknowledges.
By Alan Bjerga & Derek Wallbank -
Jul 11, 2013 3:54 PM CT
Farmer Bill Maupin, left, confers with
landowner Norman Sandelbach while inspecting freshly planted corn seeds
in a field outside of Henry, Illinois.
House Republicans passed a five-year
U.S. farm-policy bill that retains subsidies to farmers and
strips out food-stamp spending, costing it Democratic support.
The plan was approved today 216-208, with all Democrats and
12 Republicans in opposition. The measure also would repeal
underlying provisions that potentially would double milk prices
when a new law isn’t passed. The measure, scaled back after the
House defeated a bill that included food stamps three weeks ago,
is “extremely flawed,” said Senator Debbie Stabenow,
chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee.
Farmer Bill Maupin, left, confers
with landowner Norman Sandelbach while inspecting freshly planted corn
seeds in a field outside of Henry, Illinois. Photographer: Daniel
Acker/Bloomberg
“The bill passed by the House today is not a real farm
bill and is an insult to rural America,” the Michigan Democrat,
who will lead Senate negotiators to work out a final bill with
House lawmakers, said in a statement after the vote.
The legislation, which benefits crop buyers such as Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. (ADM) and insurers including Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC),
has been working through Congress for almost two years. The
Senate on June 10 passed S. 954, a plan that would cost $955
billion over a decade. Current law begins to expire Sept. 30.
The Obama administration has threatened to veto the farm
measure that excludes food stamp and nutrition programs.
Action Stymied
House action has been stymied largely by disagreements on
food stamps. The legislation rejected last month, H.R. 1947,
would cut spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program, responsible for more than three-quarters of the bill’s
costs, by about 2.5 percent, roughly $2 billion a year.
Democrats who balked at the reductions joined Republicans
objecting to the plan’s cost to scuttle the bill. Republican
leaders revived the measure in scaled-back form.
The stripped-down plan gained support from Republicans
willing to deal with food stamps later. “It’s not a secret I am
not a fan of the farm bill,” said Representative Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican who opposed the June version and
supported the bill today. “I’ve learned around here that you
rarely get to vote for success but you can vote for progress.”
In
a vote hailed by US President Barack Obama, the Senate passed a
comprehensive immigration reform on Thursday that would help 11 million
people gain citizenship, but is expected to be blocked by the
Republican-controlled House of Representatives.
The U.S. Senate approved a landmark immigration
bill on Thursday that would provide millions of undocumented immigrants
a chance to become citizens, but the leader of the House of
Representatives said the measure was dead on arrival in the House.
In
a rare show of bipartisanship, the Democratic-controlled Senate passed
the bill by a vote of 68-32, with 14 of the Senate’s 46 Republicans
joining all 52 Democrats and two independents in support of the bill.
But
any air of celebration was tempered by House Speaker John Boehner, who
hours before the vote emphasized that Republicans would “do our own
bill,” one that “reflects the will of our majority,” many of whom oppose
citizenship for immigrants who are in the United States illegally.
Any
bill in the Republican-controlled House is expected to focus heavily on
border security and finding immigrants who have overstayed their visas.
“Immigration reform has to be grounded in real border security,” Boehner said.
Republican
divisions over immigration were evident throughout the U.S. Capitol.
While Boehner was putting the brakes on the Senate bill, Republican
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a possible 2016 presidential candidate,
delivered a passionate speech urging passage of the measure that he
helped write.
After recounting his parents’ difficult lives in
Cuba and their struggles after immigrating to the United States, Rubio
said: “For over 200 years now, they (immigrants) have come; in search of
liberty and freedom, for sure. But often simply looking for jobs to
feed their kids and the chance of a better life.”
At the end of
the Senate debate, a packed gallery of supporters, who have labored
decades for such a moment, witnessed the vote that came after three
weeks of sometimes heated discussion. More than 100 children of illegal
immigrants who were brought to the United States by their parents hugged
each other when the bill passed.
President Barack Obama, praising
the bill, said it contained tough border security requirements and
“earned citizenship” for about 11 million undocumented residents.
“Today, the Senate did its job. It’s now up to the House to do the same,” Obama said in a statement.
Mexico’s
Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the Senate bill “has the
potential to improve the lives of millions of Mexicans living in the
United States today.”
The Senate vote came after several
unsuccessful attempts in the past decade or so to overhaul a U.S.
immigration law enacted in 1986. The goal has been to improve an
outdated visa system and help U.S. firms get easier access to foreign
labor ranging from farm and construction workers to high-skilled
employees.
Business and labor groups reached a deal on the new
visa system, which is part of the Senate bill. But controversy raged
over how much new border security was needed and how long the 11 million
should wait before becoming legal residents and then citizens.
PHILADELPHIA (CBS)
– The immigration reform bill sailed through the United States Senate
yesterday, offering hope of citizenship to millions of undocumented
immigrants across the country (see related story). Local advocates are a little nervous as the bill gears up to move into the House.
“It’s a little bit of a bitter sweet pill I think right now,” says Erika Almiron, executive director of Juntos.
She says the community is happy the bill is moving forward, but afraid
that if it ever passes the United States House it won’t resemble the
Gang of 8 proposal originally lauded by immigration reform advocates.
“We see these concessions happening around this bill, so it just raises our concern as we move into the House,” she says.
Concessions
like adding tens of billions of dollars for stepped up border security
and adding more red tape to the path to citizenship. Natasha Kelemen of
the Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition says the only recourse is to continue to push lawmakers.
As anyone who has ever seen a TV court drama knows, contempt of
court is a charge that a judge can levy if he feels that he, or the
court has been disrespected.
It can be leveled against a person who is legitimately being
disrespectful/disruptive or it simply can be used by a judge to punish
someone he doesn’t like or whose tone annoys him.
Direct contempt is that which occurs in the presence of the presiding judge (in facie curiae) and may be dealt with summarily:
the judge notifies the offending party that he or she has acted in a
manner which disrupts the tribunal and prejudices the administration of
justice. After giving the person the opportunity to respond, the judge
may impose the sanction immediately.
Now, I have seen first hand a judge with a quick trigger finger on
this for a person in the back of the courtroom who did not remove his
hat quick enough. Not to say that abuse of the Contempt ruling is
running rampant, but the opportunity for it do do so is there.
Now, New York State…it all its “wisdom” has decided to extend this
arbitrary and subjective notion to the Police Officers of the State.
By doing this, the simple act of a person exercising their
constitutional rights now runs the risk of being charged with a felony.
The politicians in Albany want to pull the wool over the public’s eye by stating that this bill S.2402 would
make it a felony to physically attack a police officer while he is on
duty. The politicians are hoping that we will apathetically swallow
that BS and not ask any questions.
The first question being: Isn’t it ALL READY a felony to physically assault a police officer? The answer is obviously yes.
So what does S2402 actually say? For that, one must actually READ
the bill, and since we all know politicians don’t have time to do such
tedious things like read the bills they are voting on, I went ahead and
read it.
WASHINGTON -- A leaked document has laid bare the monumental scope of the government's surveillance of Americans' phone records -- hundreds of millions of calls -- in the first hard evidence of a massive data collection program aimed at combating terrorism under powers granted by Congress after the 9/11 attacks.
At issue is a court order, first disclosed Wednesday by The Guardian newspaper in Britain, that requires the communications company Verizon to turn over on an "ongoing, daily basis" the records of all landline and mobile telephone calls of its customers, both within the U.S. and between the U.S. and other countries. Intelligence experts said the government, though not listening in on calls, would be looking for patterns that could lead to terrorists -- and that there was every reason to believe similar orders were in place for other phone companies.
Some critics in Congress, as well as civil liberties advocates, declared that the sweeping nature of the National Security Agency program represented an unwarranted intrusion into Americans' private lives. But a number of lawmakers, including some Republicans who normally jump at the chance to criticize the Obama administration, lauded the program's effectiveness. Leaders of the House Intelligence Committee said the program had helped thwart at least one attempted terrorist attack in the United States, "possibly saving American lives."
Separately, The Washington Post and The Guardian reported Thursday the existence of another program used by the NSA and FBI that scours the nation's main Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, emails, documents and connection logs to help analysts track a person's movements and contacts. It was not clear whether the program, called PRISM, targets known suspects or broadly collects data from other Americans.
The companies include Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple. The Post said PalTalk has had numerous posts about the Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war. It also said Dropbox would soon be included
One outraged senator, Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said of the phone-records collecting: "When law-abiding Americans make phone calls, who they call, when they call and where they call is private information. As a result of the discussion that came to light today, now we're going to have a real debate."
But Republican Lindsay Graham of South Carolina said Americans have no cause for concern. "If you're not getting a call from a terrorist organization, you've got nothing to worry about," he said.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said the order was a three-month renewal of an ongoing practice that is supervised by federal judges who balance efforts to protect the country from terror attacks against the need to safeguard Americans' privacy. The surveillance powers are granted under the post-9/11 Patriot Act, which was renewed in 2006 and again in 2011.
While the scale of the program might not have been news to some congressional leaders, the disclosure offered a public glimpse into a program whose breadth is not widely understood. Sen. Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat who serves on the Intelligence Committee, said it was the type of surveillance that "I have long said would shock the public if they knew about it."
The government has hardly been forthcoming.
Wyden released a video of himself pressing Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on the matter during a Senate hearing in March.
"Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Wyden asked.
"No, sir," Clapper answered.
"It does not?" Wyden pressed.
Clapper quickly softened his answer. "Not wittingly," he said. "There are cases where they could, inadvertently perhaps, collect -- but not wittingly."
There was no immediate comment from Clapper's office Thursday on his testimony in March.
The public is now on notice that the government has been collecting data -- even if not listening to the conversations -- on every phone call every American makes, a program that has operated in the shadows for years, under President George W. Bush, and continued by President Barack Obama.
"It is very likely that business records orders like this exist for every major American telecommunication company, meaning that if you make calls in the United States the NSA has those records," wrote Cindy Cohn, general counsel of the nonprofit digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, and staff attorney Mark Rumold, in a blog post.
Without confirming the authenticity of the court order, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said such surveillance powers are "a critical tool in protecting the nation from terror threats," by helping officials determine if people in the U.S. who may have been engaged in terrorist activities have been in touch with other known or suspected terrorists.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., stressed that phone records are collected under court orders that are approved by the Senate and House Intelligence committees and regularly reviewed.
And Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada played down the significance of the revelation.
"Everyone should just calm down and understand that this isn't anything that's brand new," he said. "This is a program that's been in effect for seven years, as I recall. It's a program that has worked to prevent not all terrorism but certainly the vast, vast majority. Now is the program perfect? Of course not."
But privacy advocates said the scope of the program was indefensible.
Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, a Senate Intelligence Committee member who had previously warned that the government was collecting too much data on U.S. citizens, on Thursday charged that the government collection of Verizon phone records was a "massive invasion of Americans' privacy."
Wyden, a high-ranking Democratic senator on the committee, said he had been concerned about such surveillance for a long time but continues to be barred by Senate rules from discussing many of the details that he learned in classified intelligence briefings.
"However, I believe that when law-abiding Americans call their friends, who they call, when they call, and where they call from is private information," Wyden said. "Collecting this data about every single phone call that every American makes every day would be a massive invasion of Americans’ privacy."
In a separate comment on his Twitter feed, Wyden also noted that James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, had assured him in a March hearing that the National Security Agency was not collecting data on millions of Americans -- an assurance that Wyden now appears to find suspect.
The Guardian newspaper from Great Britain on Wednesday night revealed the existence of a four-page court order ordering Verizon to turn over the phone records of its customers who made calls from the U.S. to foreign countries or “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.”
The information sought by the government did not include the contents of the calls.
Wyden has repeatedly expressed concerns about the extent of government surveillance following the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the passage of the Patriot Act, which was used as the legal basis for the obtaining of the phone records.
Added Wyden in his statement:
"The American people have a right to know whether their government thinks that the sweeping, dragnet surveillance that has been alleged in this story is allowed under the law and whether it is actually being conducted. Furthermore, they have a right to know whether the program that has been described is actually of value in preventing attacks. Based on several years of oversight, I believe that its value and effectiveness remain unclear.”
Wyden spokesman Tom Towslee said the senator was not immediately giving interviews on the subject. But on Wyden's Twitter feed, he made several more statements:
March 12, 2013- Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asks questions in Senate Intelligence Committee on warrantless geolocation surveillance and National Security Agency tracking.
The federal government has been secretly collecting information on foreigners overseas for nearly six years from the nation's largest Internet companies like Google, Facebook and, most recently, Apple, in search of national security threats, the director of national intelligence confirmed Thursday night.
The confirmation of the classified program came just hours after government officials acknowledged a separate seven-year effort to sweep up records of telephone calls inside the United States. Together, the unfolding revelations opened a window into the growth of government surveillance that began under the Bush administration after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has clearly been embraced and even expanded under the Obama administration.
Government officials defended the two surveillance initiatives as authorized under law, known to Congress and necessary to guard the country against terrorist threats. But an array of civil liberties advocates and libertarian conservatives said the disclosures provided the most detailed confirmation yet of what has been long suspected about what the critics call an alarming and ever-widening surveillance state.
The Internet surveillance program collects data from online providers including e-mail, chat services, videos, photos, stored data, file transfers, video conferencing and log-ins, according to classified documents obtained and posted by The Washington Post and then The Guardian on Thursday afternoon.
In confirming its existence, officials said that the program, called Prism, is authorized under a foreign intelligence law that was recently renewed by Congress, and maintained that it minimizes the collection and retention of information "incidentally acquired" about Americans and permanent residents. Several of the Internet companies said they did not allow the government open-ended access to their servers but complied with specific lawful requests for information. More From the NYT: Despite Ambivalence, a Strong Embrace of Divisive Security Tools Sounding the Alarm, but With a Muted Bell Blogger, With Focus on Surveillance, Is at Center of a Debate
"It cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person, or anyone located within the United States," James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said in a statement, describing the law underlying the program. "Information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats."
The Prism program grew out of the National Security Agency's desire several years ago to begin addressing the agency's need to keep up with the explosive growth of social media, according to people familiar with the matter.
The dual revelations, in rapid succession, also suggested that someone with access to high-level intelligence secrets had decided to unveil them in the midst of furor over leak investigations. Both were reported by The Guardian, while The Post, relying upon the same presentation, almost simultaneously reported the Internet company tapping. The Post said a disenchanted intelligence official provided it with the documents to expose government overreach.
Before the disclosure of the Internet company surveillance program on Thursday, the White House and Congressional leaders defended the phone program, saying it was legal and necessary to protect national security.
(Read More:US Secretly Mines Data From Internet Companies - Reports)
Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman, told reporters aboard Air Force One that the kind of surveillance at issue "has been a critical tool in protecting the nation from terror threats as it allows counterterrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States." He added: "The president welcomes a discussion of the trade-offs between security and civil liberties."
The Guardian and The Post posted several slides from the 41-page presentation about the Internet program, listing the companies involved — which included Yahoo, Microsoft, Paltalk, AOL, Skype and YouTube — and the dates they joined the program, as well as listing the types of information collected under the program.
The reports came as President Obama was traveling to meet President Xi Jinping of China at an estate in Southern California, a meeting intended to address among other things complaints about Chinese cyberattacks and spying. Now that conversation will take place amid discussion of America's own vast surveillance operations.
But while the administration and lawmakers who supported the telephone records program emphasized that all three branches of government had signed off on it, Anthony Romero of the American Civil Liberties Union denounced the surveillance as an infringement of fundamental individual liberties, no matter how many parts of the government approved of it.
"A pox on all the three houses of government," Mr. Romero said. "On Congress, for legislating such powers, on the FISA court for being such a paper tiger and rubber stamp, and on the Obama administration for not being true to its values."
Others raised concerns about whether the telephone program was effective.
Word of the program emerged when The Guardian posted an April order from the secret foreign intelligence court directing a subsidiary of Verizon Communications to give the N.S.A. "on an ongoing daily basis" until July logs of communications "between the United States and abroad" or "wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls."
On Thursday, Senators Dianne Feinstein of California and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the top Democrat and top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, said the court order appeared to be a routine reauthorization as part of a broader program that lawmakers have long known about and supported.
"As far as I know, this is an exact three-month renewal of what has been the case for the past seven years," Ms. Feinstein said, adding that it was carried out by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court "under the business records section of the Patriot Act."
"Therefore, it is lawful," she said. "It has been briefed to Congress."
Senators Ron Wyden, Mark Udall Letter to Attorney General Holder 
