Obama administration extends health care enrollment deadline, report says

(Fox News) – The Obama administration will grant extra time to Americans who say they are unable to enroll in health care plans through the federal insurance marketplace by the deadline set for the end of March, the Washington Post reported late Tuesday.

All consumers who have begun to apply for coverage on HealthCare.gov, but who do not finish by Monday, will have until about mid-April to ask for an extension, federal officials confirmed to the newspaper.

The paper reports that users will have a chance to check a box on the website indicating they tried to enroll before the deadline, though the government will not try to determine whether the person actually made an effort to sign up.

“This is probably the first of many (extensions),” Chris Stirewalt told Megyn Kelly Tuesday on “The Kelly File.”

“This is the first nod to a dire political situation,” Stirewalt added.

[H/T FoxNews]

Dinesh D’Souza Interviews… Barack Obama?

(Breitbart) – In a just-released web video entitled “Between Two Americas,” Dinesh D’Souza shines a satirical light on Obama’s recent appearance on Zach Galifinakis’s web series “Between Two Ferns,” in which the President pitched his fledgling Obamacare plan in an effort to reach the “cool.”

The video, although satire, is really an inventive piece of guerrilla marketing for D’Souza’s soon to be released new film, America.

As for the interview, you have to watch the video.

[H/T BreitbartNews]

Eyes in the air: States move to ban drone-assisted hunting

(Fox News) – Some states are taking steps to shoot down drone-assisted hunting before the airborne gizmos catch on with hunters and alter forever the pursuit of big game under traditional rules.

Alaska this month became the third state recently to take action. On March 17 the Alaska Board of Game approved a regulation that would prohibit hunters from spotting game with unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones. It is expected to become law July 1.

Montana banned the use of drones in hunting last month. Colorado did so in January. Idaho and Wisconsin say drones are covered under current regulations that prohibit the use of aircraft to hunt, to harass hunters or to disturb wildlife. Others states could soon impose bans. In Wyoming, New Mexico and Vermont, local hunting groups have petitioned wildlife officials to outlaw the UAVs.

“We feel that the use of drones to aid in hunting is inappropriate and overwhelming technology that would essentially undermine the concept of fair-chase hunting.”

– Eric Nuse, former executive director of Orion, the Hunter’s Institute.

The issue unites two groups which are typically at odds. Animal rights activists believe drone-assisted hunting is cruel, while many hunters’ groups believe it is cheating.

“We feel that the use of drones to aid in hunting is inappropriate and overwhelming technology that would essentially undermine the concept of fair-chase hunting,” said Eric Nuse, a former executive director of Orion, the Hunter’s Institute. Nuse is leading the effort in Vermont to bar drones.

Nuse said it does not appear that use of drones in hunting is widespread. But his group and others are worried that it could catch on as drones become more prevalent and less expensive.

“We want to make sure it doesn’t get a foothold,” he said. “We see this as a great chance for abuse and before people have invested a lot of money in this technology let’s speak up first.”

Tim Brass, a Colorado spokesman for Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, said the use of a drone gives a sportsman an unfair advantage.

“We prefer not to see regulations as a general rule,” he said. “Sportsmen have a tradition of policing themselves. This was part of our effort to do that.”

Brass said he was prompted to do something after seeing a YouTube video shot in Norway. The video captures a large moose being stalked from above by a drone.

After the Colorado Parks & Wildlife Commission voted to ban UAVs for any hunting or scouting, Brass and his group pointed out that drones have many legitimate potential uses in science, agriculture and search and rescue.

“However, hunting should remain an activity of skill and woodcraft, not just technology,” they said.

Capt. Bernard Chastain, operations commander of Alaska Wildlife Troopers, told FoxNews.com his agency pushed for the drone ban after hearing about a moose kill in August 2012 involving a drone.

He said there were no other details about that particular hunt because at the time it was not illegal.

He said it would cost a hunter about $2,000 to rig-up a GoPro camera to a quadcopter and link it to a computer.

“It’s not too hard to do,” Chastain said.

Under Alaska rules hunters can’t shoot a moose or bear the same day they spot the animal from a plane. They have to wait until 3 a.m. the following day.  Chastain said the Board of Game considered a similar rule for drones, but rejected it.

“With a smaller aircraft, it would be much more difficult to see operating,” he said. “There was some concern that it would be easy to operate without being detected.”

Kristy Tibbles, executive director of the Board of Game, said no one spoke in opposition to the ban.

In December, FoxNews.com profiled a Louisiana exterminator who was using a drone to hunt feral pigs, which cause an estimated $1.5 billion damage to crops and wildlife in the South annually.

Nuse said a hunt for nuisance pigs like that was not what his group was seeking to ban.

“That’s not sport hunting,” he said.

[H/T FoxNews: Robert Gearty]

Andrea Mitchell Slams Hobby Lobby: ‘What Right Do They Have to Interfere With Medical Decisions by Women?’

(News Busters) – On her 12 p.m. ET hour MSNBC show on Tuesday, host Andrea Mitchell interrogated attorney Mark Rienzi for representing Hobby Lobby in the Supreme Court case against the ObamaCare contraception mandate: “What right do they have, again, to interfere with medical decisions by women?…I mean, this gets to the whole issue of women’s health and why should women be discriminated against in ways that other medical beneficiaries are not?”

http://www.mrctv.org/embed/126160

Rienzi pushed back: “No one’s discriminating against women, Andrea, all they’re saying is that, you’re right, these are personal decisions, these are things that people can come to different judgments about. But the government is trying to say – they’re gonna force people to be involved in it whether they want to or not.”

At the top of the interview – following a clip of Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards framing the issue as a fight for women’s rights – Mitchell pressed Rienzi:

What do you say to those like Senator Patty Murray [D-WA], like Cecile Richards, and many women and men who argue that this is a slippery slope? If you say that a small company or a company – a family-run company like Hobby Lobby should have a waiver or be able to opt-out than other corporations can as well take issue with one or another of the mandated forms of coverage under ObamaCare?

Rienzi pointed out current federal law on religious freedom: “It’s not a slippery slope and Congress enacted this law in 1993 with the support of Ted Kennedy and President Bill Clinton and the ACLU because it’s a law that strikes a reasonable balance between religious liberty and government interest.”

Mitchell fretted: “Why should women face those kinds of decisions [about contraception] made by an employer rather than made by their doctor and by themselves?”

Rienzi corrected her: “Well, actually, no. So the employer is simply trying to get out of the decision, right? The employer here says, ‘I want nothing to do with that decision, that’s your private business. You do it on your own.'”

[H/T NewsBusters: Kyle Drennen]

Wayne LaPierre: Purchase + Possession = Liberty Restored

(The Daily Caller) – In the face of repeated federal court decisions decisively blocking the City of Chicago’s ongoing denial of full Second Amendment protections to its beleaguered residents, Mayor Rahm Emanuel nonetheless remains determined to undermine individual liberty through subterfuge.

The latest example comes with the Emanuel administration’s response to a remarkable January 2014 U.S. District Court decision that struck down the city’s ban on firearm retailers as unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. The decision also decriminalizes and mandates protections for transfers between individuals that are lawful under state and federal statutes.

Emanuel petulantly called the decision a “straight-jacket” and reportedly turned to the rabidly anti-Second Amendment Joyce Foundation to devise schemes to gut the decision to make doing business next to impossible for federally licensed dealers within city limits. Joyce is the deep-pocket funding source for gun-confiscation groups like the Violence Policy Center.

The federal gun transfer decision, delivered by U.S. District Court Judge Edmond E. Chang, ruled that “the ban on gun sales and transfers prevents Chicagoans from fulfilling within the limits of Chicago, the most fundamental prerequisite of legal gun ownership—that of simple acquisition.”

Specifically, the stricken law had declared that “no firearm may be sold, acquired or otherwise transferred within the city, except through inheritance of the firearm.” To do so was a criminal act.

Judge Chang’s thoughtful and incisive decision left no doubt as to the intent of the nation’s Founders: “… Certain fundamental rights are protected by the Constitution, put outside government’s reach, including the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense under the Second Amendment. This right must also include the right to acquire a firearm.”

With lead attorneys supported by the NRA, the suit producing this decision was brought by the Illinois Association of Firearms Retailers and individual Chicago residents denied the ability to lawfully acquire firearms within city limits.

Among the city justifications methodically rejected by Judge Chang were that the city ban on lawful firearm transfers would “restrict criminals’ access to licensed dealers … restrict gun acquisition in the illegal market …” and “eliminate gun stores from Chicago, which are dangerous in themselves and cannot be safely regulated.”

In rejecting those claims, Judge Chang opined that “whatever burdens the City hopes to impose on criminal users also falls squarely on law-abiding residents who want to exercise their Second Amendment right.”

Judge Chang also rejected Chicago’s descriptions of federally regulated retail firearm outlets as being integral to “a chronically diseased regime that is fundamentally broken …” and that firearm retailers constitute “cache[s] just waiting to be raided” by criminals. It is obvious from his decision that Judge Chang, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney, clearly understands strict federal law with respect to federal firearms licensees (FFLs).  He didn’t buy the city’s myth about dealers being a major source for criminal commerce.

In fact, Judge Chang quoted a study cited by Chicago lawyers which concluded that FFLs “play a minor and unimportant role as direct sources of the criminal handgun supply.” Judge Chang concluded, “It is doubtful that keeping criminal users away from legitimate retail stores will choke the supply of guns to those users.”

Mayor Emanuel declined to appeal, still smarting from the drubbing delivered by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in 2011, striking down Chicago’s ban on shooting ranges as violating the Second Amendment.

That range ban was part of a twisted regulation designed to circumvent the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2010 McDonald decision that deemed the city’s decades-old handgun ban unconstitutional and affirmed the Second Amendment as an individual right extending to every corner of the nation.

The same regulation banning ranges simultaneously required potential handgun owners to undergo live-fire training. No range. No training. No legal handgun ownership. Alice in Wonderland.

Predictably, Emanuel and his Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy treated the court with disdain, citing the phony claim of “public safety”— the standard excuse for unconstitutionally banning handguns from the homes of honest citizens. Judge Chang summarily dismissed that claim in ruling that “the city has not demonstrated that allowing gun sales and transfers within the city limits creates such genuine and serious risks to public safety that flatly prohibiting them is justified.”

Keep in mind that there is nothing Emanuel, McCarthy and like-minded enemies of liberty have come up with that applies to violent criminals. Chicago is still the murder capital of the nation. The Mexican Sinaloa cartel reportedly still controls 100 violent street gangs, and imports billions of dollars of heroin, cocaine and meth into the Windy City. Chicago also ranks last among all federal court jurisdictions for federal prosecution of violent armed criminal predators.

Victimize gun owners, then blame the victims. That’s the Chicago Way, and it will never change as long as city bosses are pathological in their hatred of our civil rights.

Always remember Rahm Emanuel and those of his ilk who are opposed to our fundamental civil right to keep and bear arms when you donate to NRA-ILA or the NRA Civil Rights Legal Defense Fund.

Success in restoring and bolstering Second Amendment rights through aggressive legal challenges depends on you, your friends, family and colleagues.

Victory in the courts—establishing sound case law—can be achieved only through your generosity as we fight to affirm our core rights, as protected by the Second Amendment, for personal and national defense not only in Chicago, but in every corner of this great nation.

[H/T TheDailyCaller: Wayne LaPierre]

America deserves better than Clintons

(WND) – Exclusive: Kathleen Willey suggests Hillary ‘consider retreating from public life’

“What difference does it make?”

Indeed, Madam Secretary, Madam Senator, former first lady and FLOA, it makes a very big difference.

The last time we saw Hillary Clinton as our secretary of state, she was testifying before a congressional committee about Benghazi. During that meeting on Jan. 22, 2013, we heard her shriek, “What difference does it make?”

Earlier, right before one of the presidential debates, on Oct. 15, 2012, Hillary stated during a series of interviews that she, as secretary of state, was responsible for the security of the embassy staff. “The buck stops here.”

I remember being so surprised when I heard it, but I was immediately suspicious.

Nothing – absolutely nothing – is happenstance in the Clintons’ world. Everything they do or say is weighed, measured, practiced and tested. Taking responsibility for anything is rare for them, so I waited for follow-up, the next step. Of course, there was none. It was only a symbolic gesture as the head of her department. Saying it is easy. Doing something about it is a whole different matter. To make it stick, problems needed to be identified and corrected.

Did Hillary do any of that? Did she find the security lapses and beef up what should have been beefed up in the first place? Did she interview any of the staff? How about the members of their security force? Did she ask for and receive follow-up reports from witnesses who were in the embassy compound that night?

What difference does it make? It certainly makes a difference to the families and friends of the four men who died that night. When their bodies came home to Andrew Air Force Base, there was a grand display of solidarity and support for the families of the fallen, with Obama and Hillary leading the delegation of government and military officials. Looking oh-so distraught and sympathetic as she met with the families, she continued to blame the entire uprising on “that anti-Muslim video,” and she looked into the eyes of those families and vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice. Some may say that kind of follow-up should be in the hands of the “proper” authorities, not “hands on” by the secretary of state. Maybe. She made a promise. As a mother herself, she looked into the eyes of those mothers and promised results. So far, she’s done nothing but send up trial balloons about running for president. There are no committees, no valid reports, no interviews, nothing. Her word means nothing.

One has to wonder why the Benghazi attack happened at all. All of our embassies throughout the world are considered to be on American soil, and they are treated as such. They might as well be a government agency on Pennsylvania Avenue. Most of the people on staff are American citizens, and their safety is the responsibility of the State Department. In these troubled times and in the midst of terrorist threats, safety and security take priority.

Is there one amongst us who will never forget certain dates and events that helped shape our country? The assassinations of JFK, RFK and Martin Luther King. Oklahoma City. The Boston Marathon. We suffered our worst terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001. Most of the players are government employees working in government agencies. They should be a lot more attuned to these very significant anniversaries than most. It boggles the mind that no one, from the secretary of state to even a single janitor, did not take note of the fact that the anniversary of the worst act of terrorism on American soil was fast approaching, and it might have been prudent to remind everyone in the complex of that.

We may never know what really happened in Benghazi, but we owe it to the victims’ families and our country to find the truth. Mrs. Clinton does know what happened and, so far, she has been able to avoid telling it. If it is revealed that she played a major part in the demise of our four patriots, as we suspect she did, she might want to consider retreating from public life once and for all and, together with her husband, play the role of senior stateswoman.

We have all become weary of the Clintons and their dysfunctional family drama. We deserve better.

[H/T WND: Kathleen Willey]

About Kathleen Willey: In 1992, then-Democratic activist Kathleen Willey helped send Bill and Hillary Clinton to the White House. While serving as a volunteer in the White House, Willey met with Bill Clinton in the Oval Office to request a paying position. Instead of offering assistance, she said he sexually assaulted her.

DoD Military Training to ‘Scare the Crap Out of People’ in Florida

(Infowars) – Broward County residents complain about low flying helicopters.

The Department of Defense is conducting military training in Broward County this week, with exercises involving low flying helicopters that will ‘scare the crap out of people’, according to one local reporter.

After residents in downtown Fort Lauderdale began reporting low flying military helicopters last night at around 8pm, news reports emerged hours later containing details of a DoD training drill that would be taking place from March 24-27, suggesting that residents were only informed of the exercise after it had already begun.

The training drill will take place in locations throughout the county and will be aided by law enforcement.

“This training is not open to the public or media due to safety and security concerns,” states a press release on the Broward Sheriff’s Office website.

“This type of training where military helicopters go around scaring the crap out of people has been conducted in different cities across the country and is designed to certify service members in urban environment operations for any future overseas deployments,” writes Chris Joseph of the Broward/Palm Beach New Times, adding, “Don’t panic. Those military aircraft and soldiers you see down the street are only a drill.”

Infowars also received emails from concerned residents in the area who learned of low flying helicopters conducting maneuvers last night.

“Friends are calling telling me there are military helicopters all over the skies around Greater Fort Lauderdale/Broward County, low-flying military helicopters, blacked out, in the dark, large groups, running maneuvers,” wrote one.

The U.S. military routinely conducts urban warfare exercises domestically, sometimes with little or no warning whatsoever, drawing criticism that the drills are designed to acclimate Americans to a state of martial law.

In 2012, Miami residents were shocked to be awoken by a military exercise in the middle of the night which involved helicopters, fighter jets, along with simulated gunfire and grenades.

[H/T Infowars: Paul Joseph Watson]

Pew: White majority over, next generation more than 50% non-white

(Washington Examiner) – For the first time in American history, non-whites will make up half or more of the next generation, likely pushing Washington toward a bigger government — and the GOP better tone down their anti-government rhetoric if they want to win them, according to a top polling outfit.

At a briefing for congressional aides hosted by the moderate Republican Ripon Society, Pew Research Vice President Michael Dimock said that the trend among younger Americans is support for government programs and acceptance of Democratic Party policies.

“Their tendency is more liberal, their tendency is bigger government,” he said of so-called “millennials” born between 1979 and 1995. They will likely set the trend for the still-unnamed next generation.

“This is a generation that is 41 percent non-white; the generation behind it is likely to be close to 50 if not more than 50 percent non-white, and the anti-government kind of tone is one that really doesn’t resonate with that non-white sector in particular,” said Dimock at the Ripon retreat.

His advice to the GOP: “Try to take as much of the anti-government rhetoric out.”

Ripon provided Secrets with a video of his recent presentation. In it, he said that younger voters are both pro-government and pro-business, split over gun control, back abortion and believe welfare does more good than harm. What’s more, they are not angry voters and are still politically diverse.

“I think he confirmed what a lot of Republicans already know, that the party has a lot of work to do with younger Americans, who view the GOP as politically rigid and ideologically out of step. If there’s a bright spot, it’s that millennials are increasingly untethered to either party, which means there’s a chance for Republicans to win them back,” said Ripon’s Lou Zickar.

Pollster John Zogby, who has dubbed millennials First Globals in his new book, said those born after 1979 already number 75 million and will grow to become bigger than the 78-million strong Baby Boom generation, and that should be good for Democrats.

We asked him about Dimock’s prediction and characterization of the current and coming generation.

Said Zogby, who does our weekly report card on President Obama: “The 41 percent non-white figure is right on the money and so is the projection. There is a strong libertarian streak, but they largely do not hate government if it can prove to be a problem-solver. They have no patience for loud debates and for bureaucratic entropy, favoring quick and streamlined forms of problem-solving and decision-making — just as they have learned in video games. There is also an upside to their all having received a trophy: They are great believers and practitioners in teamwork. This is potentially great news for Democrats and liberals (34 percent call themselves such), but mainly it is worse news for the GOP, who have no meaningful outreach or connectivity with them.”

[H/T WashingtonExaminer: Paul Bedard]