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Nevada rancher and former Shoshone chief's range war with BLM predates Bundy standoff Long before Cliven Bundy faced down federal agents in his dispute with the Bureau of Land Management over grazing rights, fellow Nevada rancher Raymond Yowell, an 84-year-old former Shoshone chief, watched as the BLM seized his herd. Adding to that, since 2008 they've taken his money as well -- in the form of a piece of his Social Security checks. Yowell's 132 head of cattle had grazed for decades on the South Fork Western Shoshone Indian Reservation in northeastern Nevada until 2002, when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) -- the same agency at odds with Bundy -- seized them. The federal agency sold the cattle at auction and used the proceeds to pay off the portion of back grazing fees it claimed Yowell owed. Once the cattle was sold, the agency sent Yowell a bill for the outstanding balance, some $180,000. They've been garnishing his monthly Social Security checks since 2008 to satisfy the debt Yowell says he does not owe. "There’s a definite pattern in the West, beginning in the 1990s, maybe in the late '80s, of what I feel are illegal cattle seizures," Yowell said. "[bundy's case] is the latest example of that pattern.” While Bundy is defying the federal agency over fees for grazing cattle on government-owned land, Yowell's cattle had roamed reservation land. But a 1979 Supreme Court decision held that even land designated for Indian reservations is held in trust for them, and thus subject to BLM regulation. Yowell says treaties that led to creation of the reservation granted him and other herdsmen the right to graze cattle on the land, which they did successfully for decades. The Western Shoshone say they have never relinquished their right to the territory. Yowell represented himself in a successful effort to win a federal injunction to stop the BLM from impounding his cattle, as well as a subsequent 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that reversed the lower court. He's again representing himself in a petition to have the U.S. Supreme Court hear his case, in which he argues his cattle were taken without due process and in violation of multiple treaties. “Certainly, due process of law has not been followed in my case,” Yowell told FoxNews.com. “When we were kids going to school, learning the white way, we said the Pledge of Allegiance every morning and one of the things I remember saying is ‘equality and justice for all.’ Well that’s certainly not the case.” "But there’s a definite pattern in the West right now, beginning in the 1990s, maybe in the late 80's, of what I feel are illegal cattle seizures. [bundy] is the latest example of that pattern." Celia Boddington, a BLM spokeswoman, said she had no comment on the pending case. But the BLM has previously said the tribe’s Te-Moak Livestock Association held a federal permit to graze cattle on the public land from 1940 to 1984, but had stopped paying required fees in 1984, when it asserted the tribe rightfully owned the land. Last week, the U.S. Solicitor General's Office, which represents the federal government in disputes before the Supreme Court, was granted an extension in Yowell's case even as the Bundy situation was making national headlines. Federal attorneys are due to file a response to Yowell's petition for a writ of certiorari on June 4. While the Bundy case is not exactly the same as Yowell's, the parallels are obvious in the The Silver State and beyond. Bundy’s dispute, like Yowell’s, dates back decades to when the government designated the scenic Gold Butte region, where Bundy's cattle graze, as protected habitat for endangered desert tortoise and slashed his allotment of cows. He then quit paying grazing fees to BLM, which canceled his grazing permit and ordered him to remove his 380 cattle. Yowell said he sees some “commonality” between his fight and Bundy’s, but stressed his claim to the land is further strengthened by the Treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863, which formally recognized Western Shoshone rights to some 60 million acres in Nevada, Idaho, Utah and California. In 1979, however, the Supreme Court ruled that the treaty gave the government trusteeship over tribal lands and could eventually claim them as “public” or federal land. “His feeling is that he’s acquired certain rights and now his rights are being violated by the Bureau of Land Management,” Yowell said. “But I have Indian rights, treaty rights that he doesn’t have.” Yowell, who has separately sued the BLM and the Treasury Department for $30 million, said the U.S Treasury Department began garnishing his Social Security in 2008 check at BLM’s behest. “They’re entitled to take up to 15 percent of what I get,” said Yowell, who receives $962 of what should be an $1,150 check per month. “And that’s what they’re doing.” Yowell, who retired in 2006 and turned what remained of his ranching business over to his 50-year-old son, said his legal fight is his "legacy," even though it has already left him with a jaded view of the white man's government. “It’s diminished my feeling, my view of the government,” Yowell told FoxNews.com. “They don’t practice what they say.”

One night my friends asked me to go out with them. I told my wife that I would be home by midnight. Hours passed and the beers went down way too easy. Around 3 a.m.(a bit loaded) I headed home. Just as I walked in the door the cuckoo clock chimmed 3 times. Afraid that my wife would wake up I quickly cuckooed 9 more times. I was really proud of myself for coming up with a quick witted solution. The next morning my wife asked me what time I had got in. I said: "MIDNIGHT, Like I Said!" She seemed fine with my answer, so I thought that I had gotten away with it. Then my wife promptly told me that we needed to get a new cuckoo clock, I asked why and she said: "Well, last night our cuckoo clock cuckooed 3 times, said oh crap, cuckooed 4 times, cleared its throat, cuckooed 3 more times, giggled, cuckooed 2 more times, then tripped over the coffee table and farted."

A little girl asked her mother: "How did the human race appear?" The mother answered: "God made Adam and Eve and they had children, and so was all mankind made.." Two days later the girl asked her father the same question.. The father answered: "Many years ago there were monkeys from which the human race evolved." The confused girl returned to her mother and said: "Mom, how is it possible that you told me the human race was created by God and Dad said they developed from monkeys?" The mother answered: "Well, dear, it is very simple. I told you about my side of the family and your father told you about his."

A priest and a taxi driver both died and went to heaven. St. Peter was at the Pearly gates waiting for them. "Come with me", said St. Peter to the taxi driver. The taxi driver did as he was told and followed St. Peter to a mansion. It had anything you could imagine from a bowling alley to an Olympic-size swimming pool. "Wow, thank you!", said the taxi driver. Next, St. Peter led the priest to a rugged old shack with a bunk bed and a little old television set. "Wait, I think you are a little mixed up", said the Priest. "Shouldn't I be the one who gets the mansion? After all I was a priest, went to church every day, and preached God's word." "Yes, that's true. But during your sermons people slept. When the taxi driver drove, everyone prayed."

Widdle Wabbit A precious little girl walks into a petsmart shop and asks, in the sweetest little lisp, between two missing teeth, "Excuthe me, mithter, do you keep widdle wabbits?" As the shopkeeper's heart melts, he gets down on his knees so that he's on her level and asks, "Do you want a widdle white wabbit, or a thoft and fuwwy, bwack wabbit, or maybe one like that cute widdle bwown wabbit over there?" She, in turn, blushes, rocks on her heels, puts her hands on her knees, leans forward and says, in a tiny quiet voice, "I don't think my python weally gives a thit."

Would be funny if it not for being true-- THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER This one is a little different... ... Two Different Versions.... .......... .... Two Different Morals OLD VERSION The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold. MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself! MODERN VERSION The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving. CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so? Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green...' ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, “We shall overcome.” Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake. President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight. Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share. Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czarand given to the grasshopper. The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again. The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and once peaceful, neighborhood. The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it. MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote. I’ve sent this to you because I believe that you are an ant – not a grasshopper! Make sure that you pass this on to other ants. Don’t bother sending it on to any grasshoppers because they wouldn’t understand it, anyway.

Reports: Company Tied to Reid's Son Wants Land in Bundy Standoff Sunday, 13 Apr 2014 08:48 PM By Greg Richter The Nevada rancher who forced the federal Bureau of Land Management to back down last week may have been targeted because a Chinese solar company with ties to Sen. Harry Reid's son wants the land for an energy plant, several websites report. A report on Godfatherpolitics.com, says Chinese energy giant ENN Energy Group wants to use federal land as part of its effort to build a $5 billion solar farm and panel-building plant in the southern Nevada desert. Rory Reid, the son of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, is representing ENN in their efforts to locate in Nevada. Part of the land ENN wants to use was purchased from Clark County at well below appraised value. Rory Reid is the former Clark County Commission chairman, and he persuaded the commission to sell 9,000 acres of county land to ENN on the promise it would provide jobs for the area, Reuters reported in 2012. In addition to the county acreage, the federal Bureau of Land Management at one time was looking at BLM property under dispute with cattle rancher Cliven Bundy. The BLM is headed by former Harry Reid senior policy adviser Neil Kornz. According to BizPac Review, BLM documents indicate that the federal property for which Bundy claims grazing rights were under consideration by a solar energy company. Those documents have since been removed from BLM's website, but BizPac quotes from one of them: "Non-Governmental Organizations have expressed concern that the regional mitigation strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone utilizes Gold Butte as the location for offsite mitigation for impacts from solar development, and that those restoration activities are not durable with the presence of trespass cattle." "Trespass cattle" is a reference to Bundy's herd. Bundy's family has grazed cattle on the land since the 1870s, and Bundy maintains he has grazing rights to the federal land. But he hasn't paid his federal grazing fees in 20 years in a dispute with the BLM. BLM agents hired contract cowboys earlier this year to seize hundreds of head of cattle and were moving in to seize the rest when militia members from across the country and other supporters showed up last week. Citing a dangerous situation, the BLM backed off its efforts and returned Bundy's cattle Saturday, but it has vowed to continue fighting him in court and administratively. In its effort to get Bundy off the land, it has attempted to get him to reduce his 1,000-head herd to 150, The Blaze's Dana Loesch reports. Bundy says his ranch would not be viable with a herd that small. The BLM claims a need to control grazing on the land to protect an endangered desert tortoise. But Loesch and others note that in August, the tortoise population in a nearby conservation center was set to be euthanized because of underfunding. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service denied those reports, saying that only unhealthy tortoises would be euthanized and others would be relocated. But KVVU-TV in Las Vegas reported that the agency didn't say how many of the tortoises in its care were deemed "healthy." Further, Loesch reports, Harry Reid pressured the BLM to change the tortoise's protected zone to accommodate developer Harvey Whittemore, one of the Democrat's top donors. Whittemore was convicted in May 2013 of making illegal campaign contributions to him. "BLM has proven that they’ve a situational concern for the desert tortoise as they’ve had no problem waiving their rules concerning wind or solar power development," Loesch writes. "Clearly, these developments have vastly affected a tortoise habitat more than a century-old, quasi-homesteading grazing area. If only Clive Bundy were a big Reid donor."

NASA and the Navajo When NASA was preparing for the Apollo Project, it took the astronauts to a Navajo reservation in Arizona for training. One day, a Navajo elder and his son came across the space crew walking among the rocks. The elder, who spoke only Navajo, asked a question. His son translated for the NASA people: "What are these guys in the big suits doing?" One of the astronauts said that they were practicing for a trip to the moon. When his son relayed this comment the Navajo elder got all excited and asked if it would be possible to give to the astronauts a message to deliver to the moon. Recognizing a promotional opportunity when he saw one, a NASA official accompanying the astronauts said, "Why certainly!" and told an underling to get a tape recorder. The Navajo elder's comments into the microphone were brief. The NASA official asked the son if he would translate what his father had said. The son listened to the recording and laughed uproariously. But he refused to translate. So the NASA people took the tape to a nearby Navajo village and played it for other members of the tribe. They too laughed long and loudly but also refused to translate the elder's message to the moon. Finally, an official government translator was summoned. After he finally stopped laughing the translator relayed the message: "Watch out for these a$$holes. They have come to steal your land."

Ordering a Pizza from Big Brother Operator: "Thank you for calling Pizza Hut. May I have your..." Customer: "Hi, I'd like to order." Operator: "May I have your NIDN first, sir?" Customer: "My National ID Number, yeah, hold on, eh, it's 6102049998-45-54610." Operator: "Thank you, Mr. Sheehan. I see you live at 1742 Meadowland Drive, and the phone number's 494-2366. Your office number over at Lincoln Insurance is 745-2302 and your cell number's 266-2566. Which number are you calling from, sir?" Customer: "Huh? I'm at home. Where d'ya get all this information?" Operator: "We're wired into the system, sir." Customer: (Sighs) "Oh, well, I'd like to order a couple of your All-Meat Special pizzas..." Operator: "I don't think that's a good idea, sir." Customer: "Whaddya mean?" Operator: "Sir, your medical records indicate that you've got very high blood pressure and extremely high cholesterol. Your National Health Care provider won't allow such an unhealthy choice." Customer: "Damn. What do you recommend, then?" Operator: "You might try our low-fat Soybean Yogurt Pizza. I'm sure you'll like it" Customer: "What makes you think I'd like something like that?" Operator: "Well, you checked out 'Gourmet Soybean Recipes' from your local library last week, sir. That's why I made the suggestion." Customer: "All right, all right. Give me two family-sized ones, then. What's the damage?" Operator: "That should be plenty for you, your wife and your four kids, sir. The 'damage,' as you put it, heh, heh, comes $49.99." Customer: "Lemme give you my credit card number." Operator: "I'm sorry sir, but I'm afraid you'll have to pay in cash Your credit card balance is over its limit." Customer: "I'll run over to the ATM and get some cash before your driver gets here." Operator: "That won't work either, sir. Your checking account's overdrawn" Customer: "Never mind. Just send the pizzas. I'll have the cash ready. How long will it take?" Operator: "We're running a little behind, sir. It'll be about 45 minutes, sir. If you're in a hurry you might want to pick 'em up while you're out getting the cash, but carrying pizzas on a motorcycle can be a little awkward." Customer: "How the hell do you know I'm riding a bike?" Operator: "It says here you're in arrears on your car payments, so your car got repo'ed. But your Harley's paid up, so I just assumed that you'd be using it." Customer: "@#%/$@&?#!" Operator: "I'd advise watching your language, sir. You've already got a July 2012 conviction for cussing out a cop." Customer: (Speechless) Operator: "Will there be anything else, sir?" Customer: "No, nothing. oh, yeah, don't forget the two free liters of Coke your ad says I get with the pizzas." Operator: "I'm sorry sir, but our ad's exclusionary clause prevents us from offering free soda to diabetics." "Thank you for your order sir."

A History Lesson Humans originally existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters/gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in the winter. The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer. These were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups: 1. Liberals; and 2. Conservatives. Once beer was discovered, it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early humans were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed. Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to B-B-Q at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as the Conservative movement. Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly B-B-Q's and doing the sewing, fetching, and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement. Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women. The rest became known as girliemen. Some noteworthy liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy, group hugs, and the concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that conservatives provided. Over the years conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant. Liberals are symbolized by the jackass. Modern liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare. Another interesting evolutionary side note: most of their women have higher testosterone levels than their men. Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn't fair to make the pitcher also bat. Conservatives drink domestic beer. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big-game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, corporate executives, athletes, Marines, and generally anyone who works productively. Conservatives who own companies hire other conservatives who want to work for a living. Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to govern the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when conservatives were coming to America. They crept in after the Wild West was tamed and created a business of trying to get more for nothing. Here ends today's lesson in world history: It should be noted that a Liberal may have a momentary urge to angrily respond to the above before forwarding it. A Conservative will simply laugh and be so convinced of the absolute truth of this history that it will be forwarded immediately to other true believers and to more liberals just to piss them off.

Income Tax Filing Strategy To: Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury Washington, DC 20001 Enclosed is my 2013 Form 1040, together with payment. Please take note of the attached article from USA Today archives. In the article, you will note that the Pentagon paid $171.50 each for hammers and NASA paid $600.00 each for toilet seats. Please find enclosed in this package four toilet seats (value $2,400.00) and six hammers (value $1,029.00). This is in payment for my total tax due of $3,429.00. Out of a sense of patriotic duty, and to assist in the political purification of our government, I am also enclosing a 1.5 inch Phillips head screw, for which HUD duly recorded and approved a purchase value of $22.00, as my contribution to fulfill the Presidential Election Fund option on Form 1040. It has been a pleasure to pay my taxes this year, and I look forward to paying them again next year in accordance with officially established government values. Sincerely, Another satisfied taxpayer

Tough Nut Tonto

Michelle Snyder Of Obamacare Website, To Retire Second Official to Leave After Health Site Trouble By ROBERT PEAR Published: December 30, 2013· WASHINGTON — The No. 2 official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who supervised the troubled rollout of President Obama’s health care law, is retiring, administration officials said Monday. Michelle Snyder oversaw the technology experts who built the HealthCare.gov website. The official, Michelle Snyder, is the agency’s chief operating officer. She is the second administration official to depart since problems at the website, HealthCare.gov, frustrated millions of people trying to buy insurance and caused political embarrassment to President Obama. Ms. Snyder is in charge of the Medicare agency’s day-to-day activities and the allocation of resources, including budget and personnel. Technology experts who built the website for the federal insurance exchange reported to her, and she has been actively involved in the effort to fix the site’s problems. Ms. Snyder’s departure follows that of the agency’s chief information officer, Tony Trenkle, who stepped down in November to take a job in the private sector. A former agency official who had predicted Ms. Snyder’s departure said Monday: “She had to go. She was responsible for the implementation of Obamacare. She controlled all the resources to get it done. She was in charge of information technology. She controlled personnel and budget.” Asked about Ms. Snyder’s plans, an agency official said Monday: “It’s her personal decision to retire now.” Ms. Snyder could not be reached for comment. The move comes after a series of congressional oversight hearings at which Republicans and Democrats sought to determine who should be held accountable for the health law’s disastrous rollout. At one such hearing on Oct. 30, Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, was asked who was responsible for developing the federal website, and she named Ms. Snyder. But Ms. Sebelius quickly added: “Michelle Snyder is not responsible for those debacles. Hold me accountable for the debacle. I’m responsible.” Ms. Snyder’s official biography states that she was responsible for setting up “new programs and activities required by the Affordable Care Act.” In an email to agency employees, Marilyn B. Tavenner, the administrator of the Medicare agency, said Ms. Snyder was retiring this week “after 41 years of outstanding public service,” but made no mention of her role overseeing the development of the federal insurance exchange. “While we celebrate her distinguished career, we are also sadly saying farewell to a good friend and a key member of the agency’s leadership team,” Ms. Tavenner wrote. “Michelle’s intelligence, experience and formidable work ethic have been indispensable to me and to many of you during her tenure.” Ms. Tavenner said that Ms. Snyder was prepared to step down at the end of 2012, but stayed on the job “at my request to help me with the challenges facing C.M.S. in 2013.” The agency, which runs Medicare and Medicaid in addition to carrying out major provisions of the Affordable Care Act, provides health insurance to more than 100 million people and spends more than $800 billion a year, which is substantially more than the Defense Department budget. Agency officials said that Ms. Snyder’s deputy, Tim Love, would fill her position on an acting basis. Many of the initial problems with the federal insurance exchange have been fixed, but their effects linger as the agency and insurers try to correct enrollment records. In late September, Ms. Snyder signed an internal memo acknowledging that security controls for the website had not been fully tested and recommending a plan to reduce the risks. Representative Darrell Issa, a Republican of California and chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said: “Documents and interviews indicate Michelle Snyder’s involvement in bypassing the recommendation of C.M.S.’s top security expert, who recommended delaying the launch of HealthCare.gov.” However, Patti Unruh, a spokeswoman for the Medicare agency, said: “There have been no successful security attacks on HealthCare.gov, and no person or group has maliciously accessed personally identifiable information.” Ms. Snyder became the first chief financial officer of the agency in the late 1990s. In August, she signed a document approving a contract worth up to $11.6 million for “urgently needed financial management services” at the new insurance exchanges. The document said the government did not have time to allow competitive bidding because it had just discovered that it needed more financial expertise.

A christmas poem for those who protect and fight for us The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light, I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight. My wife was asleep, her head on my chest, my daughter beside me, angelic in rest. Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white, Transforming the yard to a winter delight. The sparkling lights in the tree, I believe, Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve. My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep, Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep in perfect contentment, or so it would seem. So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream. The sound wasn't loud, and it wasn't too near, But I opened my eye when it tickled my ear. Perhaps just a cough, I didn't quite know, Then the sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow. My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear, and I crept to the door just to see who was near. Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night, A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight. A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold. Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled, Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child. "What are you doing?" I asked without fear, "Come in this moment, it's freezing out here! Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve, You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!" For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift, away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts, to the window that danced with a warm fire's light. Then he sighed and he said "It's really all right, I'm out here by choice. I'm here every night." "It's my duty to stand at the front of the line, that separates you from the darkest of times. No one had to ask or beg or implore me, I'm proud to stand here like my fathers before me." "My Gramps died at 'Pearl on a day in December," then he sighed, "That's a Christmas 'Gram always remembers. My dad stood his watch in the jungles of 'Nam And now it is my turn and so, here I am." "I've not seen my own son in more than a while, But my wife sends me pictures, he's sure got her smile." Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag, The red white and blue... an American flag. "I can live through the cold and the being alone, Away from my family, my house and my home, I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet, I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat, I can carry the weight of killing another or lay down my life with my sisters and brothers who stand at the front against any and all, to insure for all time that this flag will not fall." "So go back inside," he said, "harbor no fright Your family is waiting and I'll be all right." "But isn't there something I can do, at the least, Give you money," I asked, "or prepare you a feast? It seems all too little for all that you've done, For being away from your wife and your son." Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret, "Just tell us you love us, and never forget To fight for our rights back at home while we're gone. To stand your own watch, no matter how long. For when we come home, either standing or dead, to know you remember we fought and we bled is payment enough, and with that we will trust. That we mattered to you as you mattered to us." In loving appreciation of the countless Americans who have and continued to serve in the Armed Forces, and those who gave their life for their country. Your sacrifices will never be forgotten. We look forward to the day you come home. God bless and keep you always, and God Bless America.

Teacher to student: You can't be Santa -- you're black! The family of an African-American high school student in New Mexico says he's crushed after a teacher questioned why he was wearing Santa garb during a school holiday dress-up day last week,CNN affiliate KOAT reported. The teacher told Christopher Rougier, a freshman at Cleveland High School, that he couldn't be Santa because Santa is white, the student's father, Michael, told KOAT. "He was embarrassed," he told the station. Now, his son doesn't want anything to do with Christmas. Michael Rougier said the teacher called his wife to apologize, but that's not enough. "He needs to be fired," Rougier told KOAT. "For him to make a comment like that, there has to be at a minimum prejudice in him, and we don't have room for that." Kim Vesely, the director of Rio Rancho Public Schools, released a statement to media about the incident. "This situation involves a teacher recently hired by Cleveland High who made -- and admits he made -- a stupid mistake," the director said. "The remark was inappropriate and should not have been made. The teacher feels very badly about what occurred. He self-reported the incident to the principal and has apologized to the student and to the student's parent. Appropriate disciplinary action has been taken." The boy's family has asked that he be moved out of the teacher's class, and the school has complied, Vesely said. The teacher's remark came amid something of a dust-up over Santa's skin color after Fox News Channel picked up on a Slate.com writer's piece questioning the mythical character's ethnicity. Writer Aisha Harris, who is black, wrote about growing up wondering why Santa was depicted as a white man, and argued for something less definitive: a penguin. In a widely viewed segment reacting to Harris' piece, Fox anchor Megyn Kelly said on air: "And, by the way, for all of you kids watching at home, Santa just is white, but this person is arguing maybe we should also have a black Santa. But, you know, Santa is what he is. And so, you know, we're just debating this because someone wrote about it, kids." Harris said Kelly's comments are part of the reason she felt the need to provoke thought about Santa's race. "To me, (it) just spoke to the reason why I wrote the piece, is that there are a lot of people out there who automatically assume that Santa must be white and there's no way -- it's laughable that he could be anything else," Harris said Sunday on CNN's "Reliable Sources." "The point I was trying to make was that I think that we have, the world has changed a lot over the last 50, 100 years, and Santa Claus is a fictional character," Harris continued. "He is nothing like the original historical figure he was based off of anymore," she said. "We've kind of evolved him into this magical mythical figure, and for kids, I think it's important that they don't have to feel necessarily bogged down that Santa is always white, and that's the way he should be." Kelly shot back at her critics, telling them to get a sense of humor. "Humor is what we try to bring to this show, but that's lost on the humorless," she said Friday on "The Kelly File." "This would be funny if it were not so telling about our society, in particular, the knee-jerk instinct by so many to race-bait and to assume the worst in people, especially people employed by the very powerful Fox News Channel." She wasn't motivated by racial fear or loathing, she said. "In fact, it was something far less sinister: A lifetime of exposure to the very same commercials, mall casting calls, and movies Harris references in her piece." "We continually see St. Nick as a white man in modern-day America," Kelly continued. "Should that change? Well, that debate got lost because so many couldn't get past the fact that I acknowledged, as Harris did, that the most commonly depicted image of Santa, does, in fact, have white skin." Some people had a relatively smaller field day with those comments. Gawker's assessment of the back-and-forth -- "To quote Charlie Brown in 'A Charlie Brown Christmas': 'Good grief!' " Opinion: Santa's color isn't the important thing And former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the co-host of CNN's Crossfire, said a network makeup artist told him "Santa Claus is what every child needs him to be, and the children get to decide Santa Claus, not some TV commentator." "I thought it was beautifully done," Gingrich added.

The New York Times Monday, December 16, 2013 Sheriffs Refuse to Enforce Laws on Gun Control GREELEY, Colo. — When Sheriff John Cooke of Weld County explains in speeches why he is not enforcing the state’s new gun laws, he holds up two 30-round magazines. One, he says, he had before July 1, when the law banning the possession, sale or transfer of the large-capacity magazines went into effect. The other, he “maybe” obtained afterward. He shuffles the magazines, which look identical, and then challenges the audience to tell the difference. “How is a deputy or an officer supposed to know which is which?” he asks. Colorado’s package of gun laws, enacted this year after mass shootings in Aurora, Colo., and Newtown, Conn., has been hailed as a victory by advocates of gun control. But if Sheriff Cooke and a majority of the other county sheriffs in Colorado offer any indication, the new laws — which mandate background checks for private gun transfers and outlaw magazines over 15 rounds — may prove nearly irrelevant across much of the state’s rural regions. Some sheriffs, like Sheriff Cooke, are refusing to enforce the laws, saying that they are too vague and violate Second Amendment rights. Many more say that enforcement will be “a very low priority,” as several sheriffs put it. All but seven of the 62 elected sheriffs in Colorado signed on in May to a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the statutes. The resistance of sheriffs in Colorado is playing out in other states, raising questions about whether tougher rules passed since Newtown will have a muted effect in parts of the American heartland, where gun ownership is common and grass-roots opposition to tighter restrictions is high. In New York State, where Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed one of the toughest gun law packages in the nation last January, two sheriffs have said publicly they would not enforce the laws — inaction that Mr. Cuomo said would set “a dangerous and frightening precedent.” The sheriffs’ refusal is unlikely to have much effect in the state: According to the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services, since 2010 sheriffs have filed less than 2 percent of the two most common felony gun charges. The vast majority of charges are filed by the state or local police. In Liberty County, Fla., a jury in October acquitted a sheriff who had been suspended and charged with misconduct after he released a man arrested by a deputy on charges of carrying a concealed firearm. The sheriff, who was immediately reinstated by the governor, said he was protecting the man’s Second Amendment rights. And in California, a delegation of sheriffs met with Gov. Jerry Brown this fall to try to persuade him to veto gun bills passed by the Legislature, including measures banning semiautomatic rifles with detachable magazines and lead ammunition for hunting (Mr. Brown signed the ammunition bill but vetoed the bill outlawing the rifles). “Our way of life means nothing to these politicians, and our interests are not being promoted in the legislative halls of Sacramento or Washington, D.C.,” said Jon E. Lopey, the sheriff of Siskiyou County, Calif., one of those who met with Governor Brown. He said enforcing gun laws was not a priority for him, and he added that residents of his rural region near the Oregon border are equally frustrated by regulations imposed by the federal Forest Service and the Environmental Protection Agency. This year, the new gun laws in Colorado have become political flash points. Two state senators who supported the legislation were recalled in elections in September; a third resigned last month rather than face a recall. Efforts to repeal the statutes are already in the works. Countering the elected sheriffs are some police chiefs, especially in urban areas, and state officials who say that the laws are not only enforceable but that they are already having an effect. Most gun stores have stopped selling the high-capacity magazines for personal use, although one sheriff acknowledged that some stores continued to sell them illegally. Some people who are selling or otherwise transferring guns privately are seeking background checks. Eric Brown, a spokesman for Gov. John W. Hickenlooper of Colorado, said, “Particularly on background checks, the numbers show the law is working.” The Colorado Bureau of Investigation has run 3,445 checks on private sales since the law went into effect, he said, and has denied gun sales to 70 people. A Federal District Court judge last month ruled against a claim in the sheriffs’ lawsuit that one part of the magazine law was unconstitutionally vague. The judge also ruled that while the sheriffs could sue as individuals, they had no standing to sue in their official capacity. Still, the state’s top law enforcement officials acknowledged that sheriffs had wide discretion in enforcing state laws. “We’re not in the position of telling sheriffs and chiefs what to do or not to do,” said Lance Clem, a spokesman for the Colorado Department of Public Safety. “We have people calling us all the time, thinking they’ve got an issue with their sheriff, and we tell them we don’t have the authority to intervene.” Sheriffs who refuse to enforce gun laws around the country are in the minority, though no statistics exist. In Colorado, though, sheriffs like Joe Pelle of Boulder County, who support the laws and have more liberal constituencies that back them, are outnumbered. “A lot of sheriffs are claiming the Constitution, saying that they’re not going to enforce this because they personally believe it violates the Second Amendment,” Sheriff Pelle said. “But that stance in and of itself violates the Constitution.” Even Sheriff W. Pete Palmer of Chaffee County, one of the seven sheriffs who declined to join the federal lawsuit because he felt duty-bound to carry out the laws, said he was unlikely to aggressively enforce them. He said enforcement poses “huge practical difficulties,” and besides, he has neither the resources nor the pressure from his constituents to make active enforcement a high priority. Violations of the laws are misdemeanors. “All law enforcement agencies consider the community standards — what is it that our community wishes us to focus on — and I can tell you our community is not worried one whit about background checks or high-capacity magazines,” he said. At their extreme, the views of sheriffs who refuse to enforce gun laws echo the stand of Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff and the author of “The County Sheriff: America’s Last Hope.” Mr. Mack has argued that county sheriffs are the ultimate arbiters of what is constitutional and what is not. The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, founded by Mr. Mack, is an organization of sheriffs and other officers who support his views. “The Supreme Court does not run my office,” Mr. Mack said in an interview. “Just because they allow something doesn’t mean that a good constitutional sheriff is going to do it.” He said that 250 sheriffs from around the country attended the association’s recent convention. Matthew J. Parlow, a law professor at Marquette University, said that some states, including New York, had laws that allowed the governor in some circumstances to investigate and remove public officials who engaged in egregious misconduct — laws that in theory might allow the removal of sheriffs who failed to enforce state statutes. But, he said, many governors could be reluctant to use such powers. And in most cases, any penalty for a sheriff who chose not to enforce state law would have to come from voters. Sheriff Cooke, for his part, said that he was entitled to use discretion in enforcement, especially when he believed the laws were wrong or unenforceable. “In my oath it says I’ll uphold the U.S. Constitution and the Constitution of the State of Colorado,” he said, as he posed for campaign photos in his office — he is running for the State Senate in 2014. “It doesn’t say I have to uphold every law passed by the Legislature.”

Elderly Women Drivers Two elderly women Marie & Edith were out driving in a large car-both could barely see over the dashboard. As they were cruising along they came to an intersection. The stoplight was red but they just went on through. The Edith in the passenger seat thought to herself "I must be losing it, I could have sworn we just went through a red light." After a few more minutes they came to another intersection and the light was red again and again they went right though. This time Edith was almost sure that the light had been red but was really concerned that she was losing it. She was getting nervous and decided to pay very close attention to the road and the next intersection to see what was going on. At the next intersection, sure enough, the light was definitely red and they went right through and she turned to the Marie and said, "Marie! Did you know we just ran through three red lights in a row! You could have killed us!" Marie turned to her and said, "Oh, am I driving?"

What do retired people do all day? My friends all ask me how I like retirement and what do I do to occupy all my free time now. Well, for example, the other day I went to town and went into a shop. I was only in there for about 5 minutes. When I came out, there was a Traffic Cop writing out a parking ticket. I went up to him and said, 'Come on man, how about giving a senior citizen a break?' He ignored me and continued writing the ticket. I called him a Nazi turd. He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having worn tires. So then I called him a sh$$head. He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first. Then he started writing a third ticket. This went on for about 20 minutes. The more I abused him, the more tickets he wrote. Personally, I didn't care. I came into town by bus. I try to have a little fun each day now that I’m retired. It's important at my age.

A guy walks into a bar with his pet monkey. He orders a drink and while he's drinking, the monkey jumps all around the place. The monkey grabs some olives off the bar and eats them. Then he grabs some sliced limes and eats them. He then jumps onto the pool table and grabs one of the billiard balls. To everyone's amazement, he sticks it in his mouth, and somehow swallows it whole. The bartender screams at the guy, "Did you see what your monkey just did?" "No, what?" "He just ate the cue ball off my pool table... whole!" "Yeah, that doesn't surprise me," replied the guy, "he eats everything in sight. Sorry! I'll pay for the cue ball and stuff." The guy finishes his drink, pays his bill, pays for the stuff the monkey ate and leaves. Two weeks later the guy is in the bar again, and has his monkey with him. He orders a drink and the monkey starts running around the bar again. While the man is finishing his drink, the monkey finds a maraschino cherry on the bar. He grabs it, sticks it up his butt, pulls it out, and eats it. Then the monkey finds a peanut, and again sticks it up his butt, pulls it out, and eats it. The bartender is disgusted. "Did you see what your monkey did just now?" "No, what?" replied the man. "Well, he stuck both a maraschino cherry and a peanut up his butt, pulled them out, and ate them!" said the bartender. "Yeah, that doesn't surprise me," replied the guy. "He still eats everything in sight, but ever since he had to crap that cue ball out, he measures everything first now."

A very long read but informative on a few things ATF uses rogue tactics in storefront stings across nation Aaron Key wasn't sure he wanted a tattoo on his neck. Especially one of a giant squid smoking a joint. But the guys running Squid's Smoke Shop in Portland, Ore., convinced him: It would be a perfect way to promote their store. They would even pay him and a friend $150 apiece if they agreed to turn their bodies into walking billboards. Key, who is mentally disabled, was swayed. He and his friend, Marquis Glover, liked Squid's. It was their hangout. The 19-year-olds spent many afternoons there playing Xbox and chatting with the owner, "Squid," and the store clerks. So they took the money and got the ink etched on their necks, tentacles creeping down to their collarbones. It would be months before the young men learned the whole thing was a setup. The guys running Squid's were actually undercover ATF agents conducting a sting to get guns away from criminals and drugs off the street. The tattoos had been sponsored by the U.S. government; advertisements for a fake storefront. The teens found out as they were arrested and booked into jail. Earlier this year when the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel exposed a botched ATF sting in Milwaukee — that included agents hiring a brain-damaged man to promote an undercover storefront and then arresting him forhis work — ATF officials told Congress the failed Milwaukee operation was an isolated case of inadequate supervision. It wasn't. The Journal Sentinel reviewed thousands of pages of court records, police reports and other documents and interviewed dozens of people involved in six ATF operations nationwide that were publicly praised by the ATF in recent years for nabbing violent criminals and making cities safer. Agents with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives employed rogue tactics similar to those used in Milwaukee in every operation, from Portland, Ore., to Pensacola, Fla. Among the findings: ■ ATF agents befriended mentally disabled people to drum up business and later arrested them in at least four cities in addition to Milwaukee. In Wichita, Kan., ATF agents referred to a man with a low IQ as "slow-headed" before deciding to secretly use him as a key cog in their sting. And agents in Albuquerque, N.M., gave a brain-damaged drug addict with little knowledge of weapons a "tutorial" on machine guns, hoping he could find them one. ■ Agents in several cities opened undercover gun- and drug-buying operations in safe zones near churches and schools, allowed juveniles to come in and play video games and teens to smoke marijuana, and provided alcohol to underage youths. In Portland, attorneys for three teens who were charged said a female agent dressed provocatively, flirted with the boys and encouraged them to bring drugs and weapons to the store to sell. ■ As they did in Milwaukee, agents in other cities offered sky-high prices for guns, leading suspects to buy firearms at stores and turn around and sell them to undercover agents for a quick profit. In other stings, agents ran fake pawnshops and readily bought stolen items, such as electronics and bikes — no questions asked — spurring burglaries and theft. In Atlanta, agents bought guns that had been stolen just hours earlier, several ripped off from police cars. ■ Agents damaged buildings they rented for their operations, tearing out walls and rewiring electricity — then stuck landlords with the repair bills. A property owner in Portland said agents removed a parking lot spotlight,damaging her new $30,000 roof and causing leaks, before they shut down the operation and disappeared without a way for her to contact them. ■ Agents pressed suspects for specific firearms that could fetch tougher penalties in court. They allowed felons to walk out of the stores armed with guns. In Wichita, agents suggested a felon take a shotgun, saw it off and bring it back — and provided instructions on how to do it. The sawed-off gun allowed them to charge the man with a more serious crime. ■ In Pensacola, the ATF hired a felon to run its pawnshop. The move widened the pool of potential targets, boosting arrest numbers.Even those trying to sell guns legally could be charged if they knowingly sold to a felon. The ATF's pawnshop partner was later convicted of pointing a loaded gun at someone outside a bar. Instead of a stiff sentence typically handed down to repeat offenders in federal court, he got six months in jail — and a pat on the back from the prosecutor. "To say this is just a few people, a few bad apples, I don't buy it," said David Harris, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and an expert on law enforcement tactics and regulation. "If your agency is in good shape with policy, training, supervision and accountability, the bad apples will not be able to take things to this level." READ MORE: Flawed sting in Milwaukee included use of brain-damaged man, burglary of storefront, automatic machine gun stolen from agent. The ATF refused the Journal Sentinel's request for an interview with Director B. Todd Jones or other agency officials to address findings of the investigation. Instead, the agency provided a written statement that failed to answer any questions, and spokeswoman Ginger Colbrun suggested reporters read ATF news releases issued after the stings. In an email, Colbrun wrote that the ATF — the primary agency entrusted with enforcing the nation's gun laws — uses storefront stings to target violent criminals. "Long-term undercover investigations are one of many tools used by ATF in locations that have high levels of violence occurring in the demographics and a mechanism is needed to rid the area of a large volume of individuals (as) opposed to a handful of individuals," she wrote. It's impossible to know the scope of the problems within the $1.2 billion agency. The agency won't say how many undercover storefronts it operates every year or disclose their locations. Agency officials don't publicize all of the busts. Court records in many districts are sealed by judges or otherwise unavailable to the public. If an operation is flawed, as in Milwaukee, there may be no publicity at all. Concerns about planning and oversight of undercover operations date to at least the late 1990s when the ATF was part of the Treasury Department. Discussions were held by top officials not only from Treasury but from the Department of Justice and others in hopes of bringing ATF investigations in line with other federal agency standards. "It was a source of frustration for everybody," said Rory Little, a former longtime federal prosecutor who participated in the meetings. Nearly 20 years later, many of the same problems exist. Butbecause much of the agency's work is done secretly, the public hasn't known. Problems with storefront stings surfaced publicly earlier this year when the Journal Sentinel followed up on a tip from a Milwaukee landlord that the ATF had damaged his building and left behind sensitive documents revealing details about undercover agents and their operation. The newspaper's investigation found the operation, dubbed Fearless Distributing, was marred by far more than the landlord knew. A machine gun and other weapons had been stolen from an agent's car, the storefront was burglarized, agents arrested the wrong people and hired the brain-damaged man, who had an IQ of 54, to set up gun and drug deals. The machine gun has not been recovered. Members of Congress from both parties demanded answers, sparking an internal investigation by the ATF and a review by the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General. Eight months later, the ATF has not released its findings and the Justice Department investigation is not complete. In a briefing with congressional staffers, ATF officials acknowledged the failures in Milwaukee but indicated they were isolated incidents. At the same time, agency officials admitted they had no written procedures, policies or guidelines for running such undercover operations. They promised to create a written policy. For years, agents have been setting up everything from phony pawnshops and tattoo parlors to recording studios and thrift stores with no official protocol. It's no surprise that, with few rules and little oversight, stings have gone astray, said a veteran ATF agent who asked that his name not be published because he was not authorized to speak on the issue and feared retribution. Many of the problems stem from poor management in the field divisions coupled with pressure on agents to make cases and prove their worth, he said. "Unfortunately, when it comes to reporting to Congress for budget reasons, the numbers are all that count," the agent said. "It is hard to define in a meaningful way to Congress that arresting one person with a long criminal history of 15 felonies is better than arresting 15 people with one felony each." The way it worksThe storefronts generally sell items such as hip-hop clothing and shoes, cigarettes and drug paraphernalia. ATF agents offer their goods at steep discounts, hoping to generate traffic. Cigarettes might sell for $2 below retail. Hundred-dollar jeans might go for $10. When it comes to pawnshops, agents might buy just about anything, paying top dollar, and welcome stolen items. No matter the type of store, they wire the places with high-resolution cameras and build secret closets with recording equipment. Growing scraggly beards and speaking street lingo, agents work to build trust among potential targets, spreading the word they are looking to buy guns and drugs. They print up fliers and pump neighbors for leads. And then they make deals, dishing out cash for pistols and shotguns, heroin and ecstasy, sometimes repeatedly from the same "customers." After several months, sometimes a year, they shut down and bust those who came in and conducted illegal business. They tally up the weapons seized and tout the number of defendants — the more the better — displaying guns and drugs before local TV cameras and print journalists, showcasing their work. With defendants caught on camera, the cases typically lead to guilty pleas and swift convictions. Seldom do the cases go to trial. Instead,theyquickly disappear from public attention. "There is enough crime out there, why do you have to manufacture it?" said Jeff Griffith, a lawyer for a defendant in Wichita. "You are really creating crime, which then you are prosecuting. You wonder where the moral high ground is in this." To be sure, the operations have led to hundreds of convictions and long prison sentences for offenders, some with violent records. In Albuquerque, for example, a man who was twice indicted on first-degree murder charges, once for killing a man in prison, was later busted in a storefront sting for being a felon in possession of weapon. But in many cases examined by the Journal Sentinel, the people charged in the stings had minor criminal histories or nonviolent convictions such as burglary or drug possession. In several of those cases, defendants still got stiff sentences, but others resulted in little or no punishment. In Wichita, nearly a third of the roughly 50 federal cases charged led to no prison time. Defendants got probation or had their case dismissed, records showed. One was acquitted by a jury. Not the results federal agents typically trumpet. Former prosecutors and other experts say the success of storefront stings should be measured by the capture of high-level targets, not street-level criminals looking to make a quick buck. "For street crime in the federal system, we want cases to take us beyond the immediate person into a more significant, dangerous group," said defense attorney Rodney Cubbie, former head of the organized crime unit of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Milwaukee. "It seems like these cases stop with the particular individual. That is a waste of federal resources." Cubbie called the stings ineffective and lazy law enforcement. He and others said it's unsurprising that stings failed to take down criminal organizations or nab many major offenders. Federal stings work best when they are tailored to a specific person or group, they said. "To open a storefront and just have an ad hoc potluck kind of a hope that maybe you'll find somebody who might commit crimes in your presence, that makes no sense to me," said defense attorney Franklyn Gimbel, a former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Milwaukee mob boss Frank Balistrieri. "They got a bunch of table scraps, that's what they got, when it comes down to it." Agents ensnare 'slow-headed' manTony Bruner was looking for a job when he noticed a new store opening a few blocks from where he lived with his grandmother in a lower-income neighborhood in Wichita just east of Interstate 135. With an IQ in the mid-50s — considered extremely intellectually deficient — Bruner hadn't been able to hold down a job. His 2009 felony burglary conviction didn't help. Still he was under pressure from his probation agent and grandmother to find work. Bruner hadn't heard of Bandit Trading, but the thrift shop full of hip-hop clothes and shoes looked like a good prospect when he walked in. The 20-year-old Bruner was just what undercover agents running the store were looking for. Agents could see Bruner was intellectually disabled. On a video of one of their first meetings in November 2010, agents referred to him as "slow-headed," according to Griffith, Bruner's attorney. "It was essential to have someone like Tony or your low-IQ guy in Milwaukee for this operation," Griffith said. "These 30-something bearded and tattooed white guys aren't going to knock on doors in the hood and say 'Do you have guns?' They had to get someone to do it for them." Agent Jason Fuller hired Bruner to hand out cards in the neighborhood; do odd jobs, such as clean up the parking lot; and watch out for police. The agents paid him in cigarettes, clothing from the store and cash — $20 to $50 in commission to find them electronics and other goods. And they took him to McDonald's when he was hungry. Eventually they asked him to find guns. Bruner said he didn't have any but he would try to find some. He ended up brokering dozens of gun sales. And then, they arrested him on more than 100 counts of being a felon in possession of a weapon. "I thought I was doing, I was just doing my job. I didn't think I was doing anything wrong," Bruner told the judge. "And they tricked me into believing I was doing a good job. And they'd tell me I was doing a good job, pat me on the back, telling me, 'You're doing a good job.' We'd hug each other and stuff like that, and they treated me like they cared about me. I told 'em I had a felony, I'm trying to stay out of trouble." While other defendants suspected the store was a front — one was captured on video saying, "You are straight-up police!" — Bruner kept telling the people in the neighborhood that the agents were his guys, "his bosses." Glenda Thomas, Bruner's grandmother, said the ATF officers duped him. She warned him to stay away — just like a grandmother in Milwaukee warned her brain-damaged grandson about Fearless Distributing. "Those guys kept preying on him about everything — giving him a shirt, a pair of pants, shoes, and a pair of shorts —that's how they paid him," Thomas told the Journal Sentinel. "I told him, I said, 'Tony, those people are not real. Why would they pay you to look out for a police car?' I said, 'Tony, you need to stop messing around with them.' He said, 'Oh, Grandma, those are my friends.'" The judge found Bruner legally competent to proceed in his case. Bruner told the judge he worried he would be killed in prison because the government made it look like he was working with the agents, and most of the defendants believed it. He was sentenced to three years in prison. The judge told him he was getting a big break because he could have gotten 10 to 12 years. Advocates for the developmentally disabled called the ATF's tactics disturbing. People with mental disabilities "have a responsibility to be law-abiding citizens like anyone else," said Leigh Ann Davis, a program manager for the Arc, a national advocacy organization for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities. "The question that comes into play is 'How much do they know they were committing a crime, and were they used?'" People working in the justice system — from street cops to federal judges — need to give additional consideration to circumstances involving people with disabilities, Davis said. "This is a population of people that are easy to get to do things. They are easy prey.... They can't make good judgment calls. That's a serious issue if an ATF agent comes up and wants to be your friend." Anything for a Buck snags 'Little Squirrel' in Pensacola Jeremy Norris wasn't a felon. He wasn't prohibited from owning or selling weapons when he put his guns up for sale in March 2010 in a local weekly newspaper. The unemployed 24-year-old Norris — who lived with his parents and girlfriend — got into trouble when he answered a phone call from someone inquiring about the guns. He didn't know the caller was working for an undercover federal sting. Norris has an IQ of 76, defined by experts as diminished mental capacity, bordering mental retardation. In hours of ATF surveillance video, Norris can be seen stumbling around, at one point with his girlfriend leading him around by the back of his shirt, according to Norris' attorney Jennifer Hart. Norris didn't have a car, so ATF agent Craig Saier — assigned to a fake pawnshop called Anything for a Buck — went to him. And he brought along the operation's top asset, a felon named Gary Renaud. Anyone who sold to Renaud — knowing he was felon — could be criminally charged. That first day, Renaud bought guns from Norris — but because he never said he was a felon, Norris could not be charged with a crime. The next time was different. Renaud told Norris he was a felon. Norris sold him a gun anyway. And Renaud and agents went back. Again and again. Each time paying far more than retail for the guns. So much that sometimes Norris, his parents and his girlfriend went to gun stores, bought firearms and sold them to Renaud at the storefront for a profit the same day, according to court documents. The agents called Norris "Little Squirrel." Surveillance video captured one of them saying, "I can use his desperation against him," according to court documents. "They were abusive to him," Hart said in an interview. "These are federal agents. Jeremy was like shooting fish in a barrel for them. Jeremy Norris is mentally retarded and the agents in this case used that to take advantage of him." Renaud told the Journal Sentinel that nobody took advantage of Norris. Although he and agents joked that Norris was "half retarded," he knew what he was doing, Renaud said. READ MORE: After sting is over, Renaud commits a gun crime — and gets a break from prosecutors. "He was money-hungry," he said, adding Norris was willing to do anything to get money for drugs. "He wanted them drugs and he wasn't afraid to let anybody know it, either." Citing Norris' low IQ, the judge sentenced him to probation. Norris was not the only mentally diminished defendant involved in the Anything for a Buck operation. John Molchan, a state prosecutor in Florida, said his office reviewed and prosecuted several of the storefront cases. He said they decided not to pursue cases against a number of low-mental-functioning defendants. They didn't even arrest those people, Molchan said, noting prosecutors have great discretion when deciding whether to charge in such cases. "I tell all the assistants, 'Do the right thing.' What is the right thing when dealing with someone who is not as gifted as everybody else?" Molchan said. "There is a great deal of responsibility placed on us to deal with that kind of problem." Attorney says defendant got 'tutorial' on gunGuillermo Medel was a heroin addict and drug dealer hoping to make some cash to support his habit when a friend brought him to Jokerz Traderz pawnshop in a strip mall in a working-class neighborhood on San Mateo Blvd. in Albuquerque. The 28-year-old Medel, who had been convicted of felony drug possession and conspiracy to commit aggravated assault, carried a revolver for protection but had never dealt in guns, according to court records. When undercover ATF agents running the store offered him $400 for his gun, he saw an opportunity. He didn't sell it then — he said he needed it — but over time he developed a relationship with the agents, bringing them guns he would get from trading drugs on the street. When they asked for a machine gun, Medel thought he had one for them. One problem: he didn't know what a machine gun was. Medel had brain damage. Hit by a drunken driver when he was 7, Medel had spent months in the hospital and never fully recovered. Agents took advantage of that and his drug addiction when they offered such high prices for guns, Medel's attorney, Brian Pori, said in court. Pori told the Journal Sentinel he is "certain that the agents were aware that Guillermo was a drug-addicted, brain-damaged street hustler who never trafficked guns in his life." "He wouldn't know how to use a machine gun to save his ass," Pori said. Pori said agents gave Medel a "tutorial" in the back room of the pawnshop to help him distinguish a machine gun from a semiautomatic weapon. ATF agent Brandon Garcia acknowledged in court Medel didn't know how to identify a machine gun. Garcia said he "field tested" the machine gun in front of Medel to determine whether it was a machine gun but wasn't teaching Medel how to use it. "And even though he saw me do it he still doesn't know how to do it," Garcia said in a March 2, 2011, hearing. Garcia denied knowing Medel was brain damaged. Ultimately Medel brought them a fully automatic machine gun, the only one seized in the sting. Medel was sentenced to eight years in federal prison. In another case stemming from the Albuquerque sting, federal charges were dismissed against a defendant with "an extensive psychiatric history." Beating a path to storefronts with stolen goodsAside from ensnaring mentally disabled people in their stings, ATF storefronts in several cities stimulated a market for stolen goods, boosting the appeal of theft and burglary. In Phoenix, James Arthur Lewis was charged with selling 11 weapons to agents at an undercover storefront. Lewis "obtained most of the firearms during residential burglaries he committed in late 2010," according to a May 16, 2012, U.S. Department of Justice news release. In Pensacola, Roderick Jones committed seven burglaries in six weeks, stealing generators, air compressors, leaf blowers, oxygen tanks and pressure washers from workers' trucks, reaping more than $2,000 from Anything for a Buck. Warren Phillips did the same thing, breaking into cars and homes, snagging GPS devices, satellite radios and even a U.S. Navy-owned computer, racing immediately to the undercover pawnshop to make quick cash, as much as $500 at a time, according to police reports. On several occasions, Phillips told the agents the goods were stolen. And one time he sold them back a DVD player that he had actually stolen from them. Maurice Rembert, too, knew about Anything for a Buck and on a June afternoon in 2011 grabbed a bike outside of a Walgreens and rode it straight to the store for $25. One of the larger thefts linked to the operation was that of engagement and wedding rings, worth $15,000, that were stolen four months after the store opened. "It requires no great thinking to know if you accept stolen goods in a pawnshop ... people are going to sell you stolen goods," said Harris, the professor from Pittsburgh. "You're asking people who frequent that place to rob and burglarize their neighbors." It's unclear how many of the stolen items were returned to their rightful owners. The Escambia County Sheriff's Office put thousands of items on display at an open house after the bust and invited the public to come in to claim their belongings. Laptops, GPS devices, tools and jewelry filled the room. According to local news accounts at the time, just 23 items — not including guns — were returned to 10 people. The sheriff's office refused to answer Journal Sentinel questions. An undercover operation in Atlanta, a smoke shop called ATL Blaze, experienced similar problems. Some defendants came to the store as many as 20 times after stealing weapons and other goods. Some guns were stolen from police squad cars. ATF agents said in court documents they tried to deter such thefts by paying less for police guns. The burglaries associated with ATL Blaze caused other problems for local law enforcement. Sheriff's deputies and local police — unaware the weapons had already been recovered by federal agents — scrambled around to solve the burglaries, spending untold resources interviewing witnesses. At times, they never solved the case. And the weapons never made it back to the owners. A Hi-Point pistol stolen from a car just after Christmas in 2010, for example, was still listed as stolen by the Fulton County Police Department when the Journal Sentinel contacted the department last month. ATF agents bought the gun at their secret storefront a week after it was taken. "If the ATF recovered this weapon, it should be in our system." said Lt. G.T. Johnson, of the department. "We have not received any notification that it was recovered." The lack of communication not only affects the clearance rate for the police department but also is a problem for whoever has the gun now, Johnson said. Molchan, the state prosecutor in Pensacola, said there were worries at the outset that the sting might encourage more burglaries, but agents in charge concluded the risk was worth it. "That is one of the concerns that you have going into something like this," he said. "That is certainly worrisome." And it's not just residents that got hit by the thieves. Anything for a Buck itself was ripped off, just like the agency's Fearless storefront in Milwaukee. The Pensacola sting was burglarized at least twice, records show. "I remember hearing that and kind of laughing about it, 'We got burglarized,'" Molchan said. Despite those problems, Molchan said he thinks the operation was successful. "We did accomplish getting the bad guys off the street and incarcerated them," he said. "Certainly no operation is perfect, but overall we view it as a major success." Armed felons allowed to leave storesIn Milwaukee, agents let a felon with a violent history leave their undercover store armed with a gun, saying he needed it for retaliation. It wasn't the only time federal agents let armed felons leave their sight. In Albuquerque, agents said they didn't know one man was a felon when they let him leave with a revolver. It took them two weeks to figure it out. In Wichita, agents running Bandit Trading let felons leave the store with guns at least three times. In the case of Keandre Johnson, prosecutors noted in a news release after the bust that he sold 16 guns to agents. The news release didn't mention that agents turned away one of his guns because it was not sawed-off. Johnson and his friend Jeremy Love brought a shotgun into Bandit Trading in mid-2011, but the agents weren't happy with it, according to attorneys for the men. The agents told Johnson they wanted a "shorty" — meaning a sawed-off shotgun. Having such a gun — more deadly at close range and easier to conceal — is illegal and can mean additional prison time. Johnson left with the gun to go saw it off, but then called the agents to ask what kind of saw to use, said Steve Gradert, attorney for Johnson. The agent told him how to do it, Gradert said. In another case, Johnny E. Griffith brought in two AK-47s to sell. But agents only had enough money to buy one, according to court documents. Griffith, a felon, was allowed to leave with the other. Agents never recovered it. ATF officials acknowledged to Congress in April that Operation Fearless in Milwaukee had no counter-surveillance set up to monitor or take down targets when they left the store — even armed felons threatening to shoot someone. They called the failure the result of poor judgment and planning. "It's basic police work," said Peter Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University and a former federal prosecutor. "The agency needs to develop experts and come up with some protocol." Landlord left with the billBeyond letting armed felons loose on the streets, ATF stings examined by the Journal Sentinel shared another similarity. They left unhappy landlords in their wake. As agents did in Milwaukee, their Portland counterparts damaged a building and stuck the landlord with the bill. Jan Gilbertson, who owns the building where agents set up Squid's Smoke Shop, said she had no idea she was leasing to federal agents. She found out from news reports after they had made the bust and cleared out. And when she saw what they had done to her building, it all made sense. The agents cut holes in the walls for cameras, damaged the carpet and left behind junk. Worst of all, they tore out a large spotlight and in the process punctured a new $30,000 roof that then leaked and had to be repaired. The security deposit didn't cover it and the agents were nowhere to be found, she said. "They know what they're doing when they do it and not telling you anything and then they disappear. It's not like they come back and fix it," she said. "It is the U.S. government. It's real difficult to figure that all out. What do you do? ... It ended up being a real bad situation for us." Portland sting across from schoolThe ATF opened Squid's Smoke Shop in 2010 in an aging strip mall near a tax service, hairdresser and a coffee shop — and across the street from H.B. Lee Middle School. ATF agents said the location near a school — which allowed enhanced penalties for selling in a safe zone — was an accident. Agent Ben Ziesemer told defense attorney Kathleen Dunn he didn't realize it was across the street from the school. When they toured the property, he said he entered the building through a different door and didn't see the school. Ziesemer, who ran the store and went by the name "Squid," also said it was the only place in that part of town that they could find that offered month-to-month rent, Dunn said. But Gilbertson, the owner, told the Journal Sentinel the ATF signed a one-year lease. Those charged with dealing drugs and weapons near a school can't use ignorance of their location as a defense, experts said. If agents didn't realize they were near the school, it is a damning indictment of the planning of the operation. "That won't hold water," said Little, the former prosecutor who is now a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. "It shows they are not doing their homework. If you're not doing your homework to find everything you can, you're as bad as the criminals." Squid's was one of at leasta half-dozen storefronts opened in safe zones, the Journal Sentinel investigation found. Laws that increase penalties for selling guns or drugs within 1,000 feet of a school include an exception for law enforcement officers who are acting in their "official capacity." Multnomah County Deputy District Attorney David Hannon, who prosecuted 17 people on state charges, most with selling drugs within 1,000 feet of a school, said the operation was a benefit to Portland and that area of the city. He called the sting an effective tool against illegal activity and said there were advantagesto having it close to a school. "We might not have been aware of all the activity next to a school without the undercover operation in place," he said. James Shanks, 54, who has lived in the area for nearly five years and had two sons attending Lee Middle School at the time, was not happy to learn the ATF set up a gun- and drug-buying operation nearby. "I think it is OK to do it, but did they have to put it there? Couldn't they find somewhere else?" he said. "It's too close to the school. When you have kids around guns, anything can happen." Agents suggest — and pay for — tattooWith a school nearby and an Xbox video game console to play for free, Squid's frequently drew a crowd that included juveniles. At least three juveniles were arrested and charged in children's court in the sting. Squid's was among at least four ATF storefronts investigated by the Journal Sentinel where kids were ensnared in the operation. "These are kids who don't have positive adult connections in their lives and if someone takes an interest in them it's going to be extremely influential," said Mark McKechnie, executive director of Youth, Rights & Justice, which represented three juveniles in Portland. "I think we were all just disturbed that they (ATF agents) seemed to be focusing on low-hanging fruit." Glover and Key, both 19 at the time, were regulars at Squid's. Glover lived right around the corner and spent hours at a time playing video games with Squid and people he thought were store workers. One day the idea of getting a tattoo came up, Glover told the Journal Sentinel. Glover said he was reluctant, but that he was persuaded by the guys at Squid's, who he thought were his friends. "It was like, 'Now you guys are honorary members of the club,'" Glover said. "We was young at the time ... I was so naive." After they got the tattoos, he said agents took pictures and posted them on the phony storefront's Facebook page and website. "They humiliated us," he said. "They were making a mockery of us." Glover was ultimately charged with trading an ounce of marijuana for clothing at the store. The charge included selling drugs within 1,000 feet of a school. Little, who spent eight years as a federal prosecutor in California and a year as associate deputy attorney general in Washington, D.C., said he had never heard of such out-of-bounds behavior by federal agents. "That's about as far over the line as you can imagine," Little said. "The government shouldn't be encouraging people to permanently disfigure their bodies." Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Karin Immergut, who handled Glover's case, chided the agents as well, asking the state prosecutor to "send a message back (to the ATF)" about the tattoos. "It's really a bad idea," she said. "They should not be recommending that." In federal court, a prosecutor who handled several of the ATF cases, including Key's, tried to explain to a judge why the agents employed the tactic. The agents said they thought Key and Glover were testing them to see if they were law enforcement, Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Kerin said in a January 2012 sentencing hearing. Key and Glover supposedly did this by suggesting they all smoke marijuana. Kerin said the agents then proposed Key and Glover get tattoos as a way to get them off their trail. The explanation didn't make sense to U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman, a former federal prosecutor. "I guess I don't make the connection," Mosman said. "They're concerned that if, among other things, they don't smoke marijuana with this guy that they'll be given up as law enforcement, so they think a way to derail that is to suggest that he get a tattoo?" Kerin tried again to explain. "Mr. Key and Mr. Glover were trying to identify them as law enforcement or possibly testing to determine if they were law enforcement." The judge cut in: "I think I understand that part. I just don't understand why you put someone off your trail by suggesting they get a tattoo. How does that help?" Kerin didn't answer directly. He said agents were looking for people to promote the store. They paid one person to hold up a sign on the street. Others to get tattoos. They told their customers: "Hey, we're looking for people to advertise, we're looking for people to get tattoos," Kerin said. "That simply is not a legitimate law enforcement tactic," said Key's attorney, Alison Clark. "This wasn't simply just a suggestion: 'Hey, you would look really great if you had a tattoo.' This was suggested and paid for by the government." The severity of Key's mental disability was not listed in the documents, but the prosecutor left no doubt he was intellectually challenged. "The one thing we do agree on is the Court can and should take the defendant's low-intellectual functioning into account in determining a proper sentence in this case," Kerin wrote in a sentencing memo. Mosman sentenced Key to 18 months in prison for selling a sawed-off shotgun and arranging for prostitutes to come to a party being thrown by the undercover agents. He then asked Key if he wanted the squid tattoo removed. "Yes," Key told the judge. Mosman ordered the tattoo be removed after Key was released from prison. "And I require the ATF to pay for the removal," he said. *** HOW WE REPORTED THIS STORYIn the wake of a flawed storefront sting in Milwaukee, reporters from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel sought to examine similar operations around the country. The ATF refused to provide a list of past stings. Reporters discovered the stings, in part, through tips, court records, news coverage and news releases issued by the ATF, the U.S. Department of Justice and local law enforcement. Reporters limited their examination to stings that were publicized since 2010. Using the online federal court records system, Pacer, the reporters pieced together the cases and then combed through thousands of pages of documents — indictments and criminal complaints, plea agreements and sentencing transcripts. Where transcripts were not available online, the Journal Sentinel ordered them. In some districts, nearly all documents related to stings were either sealed by judges or unavailable. The reporters also reviewed hundreds of pages of state court records, police reports and other records in several states. In addition, the reporters interviewed dozens of defense attorneys, prosecutors, defendants and their families, people who lived and worked near the stings, legal experts and insiders at the ATF and other law enforcement agencies. *** What could go wrong? ■ Agents pay for tattoos to promote store ■ Mentally disabled used, then charged ■ Stings near schools and churches ■ Felons hired to boost arrest numbers ■ High gun prices spur thefts ■ Buildings damaged, landlords unpaid ■ Felons leave storefronts with guns *** INFORMATION NOT RELEASEDThe ATF has refused to release its internal investigation into the failures of its flawed Fearless Distributing sting in Milwaukee. The report has been sought by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and members of Congress since its completion earlier this year. The internal review was launched after a Journal Sentinel investigation revealed numerous foul-ups in the operation. For nine months, the ATF also has refused to provide any documents to the Journal Sentinel, which has filed a dozen requests under the federal Freedom of Information Act, including the cost of the operations and rules on agents keeping guns in their vehicles. In late November, Department of Justice attorney Anne D. Work affirmed the ATF's position that its entire internal report on the closed Milwaukee operation should be kept secret and not released to the public. Work wrote that releasing the investigation "could reasonably be expected to interfere with (law) enforcement proceedings." Read more from Journal Sentinel: http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/atf-uses-rogue-tactics-in-storefront-stings-across-the-nation-b99146765z1-234916641.html#ixzz2mZ0lmmnT

Gun Control Battle Shifts To States After Newtown Massacre By Ian Simpson WASHINGTON, Dec 9 (Reuters) - In the year since the massacre of 26 schoolchildren and adults in Newtown, Connecticut, efforts to pass gun legislation have stalled in the U.S. Congress but shifted to the states, helped by the deep pockets of outgoing New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. In scores of statehouse battles, both gun-control and gun-rights advocates have notched wins since a mentally unstable gunman killed 20 first-graders and six adults at Newtown's Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012. Electoral and legislative fights since Newtown - including the election last month of a Democratic gun-control supporter, Terry McAuliffe, as governor of Virginia, the home state of the powerful National Rifle Association gun lobby - are likely a foretaste of battles to come next year in federal and state elections. "We're in this for the long haul," said Mark Glaze, executive director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a coalition founded by Bloomberg. "This issue is like a cruise ship that's been going in the wrong direction for a long time, directly toward the iceberg, and it's going to take a while to turn around." Democratic President Barack Obama supported legislation in Congress this year that would have extended background checks for sales made online and at gun shows. A Reuters/Ipsos poll in January showed that 86 percent of those surveyed favored background checks for all gun buyers. Obama also backed a proposal to ban rapid-firing "assault" weapons like the one used in Newtown and tighter limits on the capacity of ammunition clips. But the measures failed to clear the Senate in April in the face of opposition from gun-rights advocates who say it is essential to hold the line on Americans' right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment of the Constitution. The NRA has argued that attacks like Newtown were more a result of a weak mental health system than lax firearms regulations. A week after the Newtown attack, NRA Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre came out strongly against gun control and called instead for armed guards in each of the 99,000 schools in the United States. NRA officials declined to be interviewed for this story. Erich http://iqd.me/l/11, a spokesman for the Gun Owners of America, a gun rights group, said both Obama's gun-control approach and gun-free zones for schools and other sites of mass shootings are misguided. "So when a bad guy walks in there with a gun, he's going to be the only one with a gun until the police can arrive," http://iqd.me/l/11 told Reuters Television. In the U.S. House of Representatives, a gun-control bill by Mike Thompson, a California Democrat and the chairman of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, has gained 186 co-signers but has been stalled for months. The bill by Thompson, a gun owner and Second Amendment backer, would expand background checks but also would have features designed to attract support from gun-rights advocates such as banning gun ownership lists. "When the federal government failed to act, the states stepped in to fill the void" on gun-control legislation, Thompson said. 1,500 BILLS In response to the Newtown massacre and the 2012 shooting deaths of 12 people in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater, about 1,500 pieces of gun legislation were introduced in U.S. state legislatures, according to the Institute For Money In State Politics in Helena, Montana. Only about 10 percent of them were passed, with a slight edge - 74 to 66 - for gun-rights bills. They included making it easier in some states to get concealed-carry permits or removing information about gun or concealed-carry permits from the public record, the institute said. On the gun-control side, the most common theme was modifying laws on issuance of concealed-carry permits. But major changes came in five northeastern states - New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts and New Jersey - with passage of legislative packages that featured restrictions on military-style weapons like those used in Aurora and Newtown. "The number of new strong state laws is, at least since I've been involved in the movement, unprecedented," said Lindsay Nichols, attorney at the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence in San Francisco. Colorado also passed gun-control measures, but since then gun-rights activists have used recall elections to oust two state senators who had backed them. The ousters came despite the nearly $3 million Bloomberg and other gun-control advocates spent to stave off the recalls. A third senator resigned in November rather than face a recall vote. http://iqd.me/l/11, the Gun Owners of America spokesman, said the Colorado recalls would be a big factor in congressional midterm elections next year. "What happened in Colorado should send shock waves through every legislator's heart that's been supportive of gun control," he said. MONEY HELPS A shift in the fight over firearms has come with the entry of Bloomberg, the billionaire founder of the media and data company that bears his name, on the gun-control side. "Money always helps, and for the first time the gun safety side has some money behind it," said Jim Kessler, a founder of the Third Way think tank in Washington. As of Nov. 13, Bloomberg's Independence USA political action committee has sunk $2.97 million this year into federal races, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. That includes $2.2 million in an Illinois Democratic primary that saw gun-control backer Robin Kelly defeat Deborah Halvorson, who had been highly rated by the NRA. Independence USA also outpaced the NRA roughly 5 to 1 when it spent about $3 million successfully backing gun-control Democrats for Virginia governor and attorney general, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, which tracks money in state politics. Spending on federal lobbying for gun control rose to $1.8 million this year, a ninefold increase from the year before, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. But that was still far behind gun-rights lobbying, whose spending more than doubled, to almost $13 million. The rising tide of money came as the number of groups lobbying on both sides of the issue roughly doubled this year, to about 80. (Additional reporting by Katharine Jackson; Editing by Scott Malone and Douglas Royalty)

Obama Faces Backlash Over New Corporate Powers In Secret Trade Deal 　 WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration appears to have almost no international support for controversial new trade standards that would grant radical new political powers to corporations, increase the cost of prescription medications and restrict bank regulation, according to two internal memos obtained by The Huffington Post. The memos, which come from a government involved in the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade negotiations, detail continued disputes in the talks over the deal. The documents reveal broad disagreement over a host of key positions, and general skepticism that an agreement can be reached by year-end. The Obama administration has urged countries to reach a deal by New Year's Day, though there is no technical deadline. One memo, which was heavily redacted before being provided to HuffPost, was written ahead of a new round of talks in Singapore this week. Read the full text of what HuffPost received here. (Note: Ellipses indicate redacted text. Text in brackets has been added by a third party.) Another document, a chart outlining different country positions on the text, dates from early November, before the round of negotiations in Salt Lake City, Utah. View the chart here. HuffPost was unable to determine which of the 11 non-U.S. nations involved in the talks was responsible for the memo. "These are not U.S. documents and we have no idea of their authorship or authenticity," a spokesman for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said. "Some elements in them are outdated, others totally inaccurate." The spokesman declined to specify which parts were outdated or inaccurate. The Obama administration has been leading negotiations on the international trade accord since 2010. The countries involved in the talks include Australia, Brunei, Chile, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. One of the most controversial provisions in the talks includes new corporate empowerment language insisted upon by the U.S. government, which would allow foreign companies to challenge laws or regulations in a privately run international court. Under World Trade Organization treaties, this political power to contest government law is reserved for sovereign nations. The U.S. has endorsed some corporate political powers in prior trade agreements, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, but the scope of what laws can be challenged appears to be much broader in TPP negotiations. "The United States, as in previous rounds, has shown no flexibility on its proposal, being one of the most significant barriers to closing the chapter, since under the concept of Investment Agreement nearly all significant contracts that can be made between a state and a foreign investor are included," the memo reads. "Only the U.S. and Japan support the proposal." Under NAFTA, companies including Exxon Mobil, Dow Chemical and Eli Lilly have attempted to overrule Canadian regulations on offshore oil drilling, fracking, pesticides, drug patents and other issues. Companies could challenge an even broader array of rules under the TPP language. New standards concerning access to key medicines appear to be equally problematic for many nations. The Obama administration is insisting on mandating new intellectual property rules in the treaty that would grant pharmaceutical companies long-term monopolies on new medications. As a result, companies can charge high prices without regard to competition from generic providers. The result, public health experts have warned, would be higher prices around the world, and lack of access to life-saving drugs in poor countries. Nearly every intellectual property issue in the November chart is opposed by a broad majority of the 12 nations. The December memo describes 119 "outstanding issues" that remain unresolved between the nations on intellectual property matters. The deal would obligate nations to develop many standards similar to those in the United States, where domestic prescription drug prices are much higher than costs in other nations. Also according to the December memo, the U.S. has reintroduced a proposal that would hamper government health services from negotiating lower drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. The proposal appears to have been universally rejected earlier in the talks, according to the memo. Australia and New Zealand have medical boards that allow the government to reject expensive new drugs for the public health system, or negotiate lower prices with drug companies that own patents on them. If a new drug does not offer sufficient benefits over existing generic drugs, the boards can reject spending taxpayer money on the new medicines. They can also refuse to pay high prices for new drugs. The Obama administration has been pushing to ban these activities by national boards, which would lock in big profits for U.S. drug companies. Obamacare sought to mimic the behavior of these boards to lower domestic health care costs by granting new flexibilities to U.S. state agencies for determining drug prices. The U.S. is also facing major resistance on bank regulation standards. The Obama administration is seeking to curtail the use of "capital controls" by foreign governments. These can include an extremely broad variety of financial tools, from restricting lending in overheated markets to denying mass international outflows of currency during a financial panic. The loss of these tools would dramatically limit the ability of governments to prevent and stem banking crises. "The positions are still paralyzed," the December memo reads, referring to the Financial Services Chapter. "The United States shows zero flexibility." Previously leaked TPP documents have sparked alarm among global health experts, Internet freedom activists, environmentalists and organized labor, but are adamantly supported by American corporations and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Obama administration has deemed negotiations to be classified information -- banning members of Congress from discussing the American negotiating position with the press or the public. Congressional staffers have been restricted from viewing the documents. 　 Obama Faces Backlash Over New Corporate Powers In Secret Trade Deal

He's A Democrat..And A Gun Shop Owner Austin gun shop owner Michael Cargill, 43, might not fit the popular image of the gun rights movement. He's *** and a Democrat. He didn't grow up hunting, or with guns in his home. In fact, his family shunned guns like many other black families -- a reaction, in part, to the harrowing rates of black-on-black homicide. Cargill applied for a concealed-gun license 22 years ago, after his grandmother, who decided to get a nursing degree at the age of 70, was mugged and raped on the way home from the library. Now he runs Central Texas Gun Works in Austin, which specializes in concealed weapons. And while a recent poll shows six out of 10 Americans support stricter gun control laws, Cargill believes strongly that all law-abiding Americans should have a right to carry a gun for self-defense. Guns 'Do Actually Save Lives' On Sunday, Cargill auctioned off a Bushmaster, the same firearm used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, in order to raise money for medical treatments for the baby daughter of one of his employees. Cargill told Austin TV station KTBC that he hopes "to prove that guns do actually save lives." That's why Cargill, a 12-year veteran of the U.S. Army, became a gun safety instructor. Anyone in Texas who wants a license to carry a concealed handgun must take 10-hour certification course, and Cargill's classes -- which he began out of his living room -- were an instant hit. "People knew my intentions were good," he says. Cargill now teaches thousands of gun owners a year, focusing on de-escalation skills, conflict resolution, and how to stay within the parameters of the law. It took him years to find someone willing to rent him a storefront, he says, partly because he wanted to sell guns, and partly because he was black. Gun Shop Owner Turns Away Customers Who Seem 'Jittery' Cargill's goal is to make sure guns end up in well-meaning, well-trained hands, and he takes this very seriously. "As a gun store owner it's my responsibility to be a part of that step to keep everyone safe," says Cargill, who at least twice a month will refuse to sell a weapon to someone who appears suspicious. Cargill carefully monitors his customers for anything shifty. "If they're not giving you eye contact, shifting their eyes around, jittery, or I smell marijuana or alcohol," he explains. "All signs that you should not have a firearm." Of course, many people who should not have firearms do. It's this tragic fact that drives Cargill's passion for selling guns, and training gun owners. "The only thing that's going to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," he explains, adding that the gun laws currently on the books in Texas are "top notch." 'You Can't Legislate Crazy' Making it harder for law-abiding citizens to buy a gun misses the point, Cargill says. "Timothy McVeigh took down federal building in Oklahoma, killed a little over 1,000 people. He used a rental truck, fertilizer and some other things," he says. "I didn't see us standing in front of Home Depot and Lowe's protesting fertilizer. You can't legislate crazy." But we can improve the way we handle mental illness, he says. (The shooters responsible for the massacres at Virginia Tech and Fort Hood, and in Tucson, Aurora and Sandy Hook were all diagnosed with a mental illness, or reported to be mentally ill). As a Democrat, Cargill is a rarity among gun dealers. But Cargill doesn't think his profession is at odds with his liberal beliefs, and he's frustrated by some of the anti-gun arguments expressed by members of his own party. "Stop trying to make people feel guilty about protecting themselves," he urges. "There's no way we're going to completely eliminate guns from the United States. That's not reality." At Cargill's shop, you can also buy T-shirts with the slogan: "Buy a gun, annoy a liberal."

Gun Control Bills Flood Statehouses In Wake Of Sandy Hook Shooting New gun control bills are flooding into state legislatures around the country, among the clearest signs that the shooting deaths of 20 children and six adults in a Connecticut elementary school last month have galvanized lawmakers and the public on the issue of guns. While pro-gun lawmakers have filed dozens of measures to loosen gun regulations since the shooting, including bills allowing schoolteachers to carry concealed weapons in the classroom, these proposals are significantly outnumbered by bills pushing stronger gun laws, according to data that the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, an advocacy group that tracks federal and state gun laws, shared with The Huffington Post. Indeed, the states are much more active around gun legislation than lawmakers in Congress, highlighting the role states can and will play in the gun control debate even if the divisive issue continues to stymie the federal government. Perhaps most significantly, legislators are floating bills to strengthen gun regulations in swing states like Virginia and Colorado, where pro-gun advocates have long been perceived to have the upper hand. "We're seeing it in places you might expect, and places you might not expect, and we're seeing it because Sandy Hook broke America's heart," John Feinblatt, chairman of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, and a top advisor to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, said of the recent burst of state legislation. A flurry of state action to bolster gun regulations will keep the issue in the public eye and increase pressure on Congress to act on the proposals put forward earlier this week by President Barack Obama as part of a sweeping plan to counteract gun violence, gun control advocates said. "When states pass things easily in a bipartisan manner and D.C. doesn't do anything, it increases the narrative that Washington is broken, and it puts pressure on recalcitrant members to do something," said Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence. Out of more than 190 gun-related bills filed in statehouses between Jan. 1 and Jan. 15, 114 bills strengthen gun regulations, while 67 weaken them, according to the Law Center analysis. (The remainder are considered neutral.) Between 2009 and 2012 -- a period which saw several high-profile mass shootings, including the shooting rampage in Tucson, Ariz. that killed six and seriously wounded former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords -- proposed state gun laws were much more evenly divided between those that strengthened and those that weakened regulations, said Laura Cutilletta, a senior staff attorney with the group. "Usually by this time there are far fewer bills, and the bills are pretty evenly divided," Cutilletta said. "What I'm seeing this year is totally different -- it's overwhelmingly toward the side of regulation." The first state to take action on gun regulation was New York, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) pushed through a major legislative package with the support of Senate Republican leaders earlier this week. The legislation, which bans assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and requires instant background checks for ammunition sales, makes New York's gun laws the toughest in the country. Democratic leaders in Maryland, Delaware, Massachusetts and Connecticut have all announced plans to follow suit with their own broad legislative gun control packages. Pro-gun groups like the National Rifle Association have vowed to fight such efforts vigorously. But gun control advocates said that legislative movement on gun regulations in bellwether states like Virginia and Colorado will be the most compelling indication of the political shift created by the Sandy Hook shooting. On Friday, the Virginia Senate's Republican-led judicial committee rejected bills banning assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, but approved a measure to substantially strengthen background checks for gun buyers in the state. The bill, which passed the committee 8-6 with the support of the Republican Senate majority leader, requires all firearms sold at gun shows to be subject to a federal background check. Sen. Henry Marsh, the bill's Democratic author, said he had unsuccessfully pushed the gun show proposal for nearly 20 years and it had never before made it out of committee. On Friday, however, two Republicans and one pro-gun Democrat voted in favor of the measure, giving the bill its first real chance of passage, he said. "There's a significant chance it'll make it, but don't bet any money on it," Marsh said. "The bill has a road to travel. But you've got to be persistent in this business." Republicans control the Virginia House, Senate and governorship. Closing the so-called "gun show loophole" has long been a priority of gun control advocates on the state and federal level, and is one of the key legislative recommendations made by Obama in his gun violence plan earlier this week. An estimated 40 percent of all gun sales nationwide are exempt from background checks because they are made by private sellers, not federally licensed firearms dealers. A recent poll by Quinnipiac University found that 92 percent of Virginia voters supported requiring background checks for all gun sales. A similar measure to tighten background checks was proposed last week in Colorado by Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat who has previously shown little interest in promoting tougher gun legislation. Even after the Aurora shooting, where 12 people were killed and many more wounded after a disturbed man opened fire with an assault rifle in a crowded movie theater, Hickenlooper expressed skepticism that tougher gun laws would make a difference in reducing violence. Yet in a speech last week, Hickenlooper made a strong push for universal background checks for gun buyers. “Surely, Second Amendment advocates and gun control supporters can find common ground in support of this proposition: Let’s examine our laws and make the changes needed to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people,” he said. In Virginia, the background check bill was returned to the judicial committee for reconsideration on Friday, after several senators complained about its phrasing. But Marsh said the measure’s two Republican supporters made him hopeful it would quickly return to the full Senate for a vote. A spokesman for the Virginia Republican Caucus declined to comment on the bill. Gun control advocates said it was much too early to declare success, but said they were surprised that even a single bill toughening gun regulations had made it through a Republican-led committee. "I thought everything was going to get killed," Horwitz said. "Last year we played defense the whole time."

Gun Control Fight Escalates As Hundreds Join Rallies In State Capitals AUSTIN, Texas — Thousands of gun advocates gathered peacefully Saturday at state capitals around the U.S. to rally against stricter limits on firearms, with demonstrators carrying rifles and pistols in some places while those elsewhere settled for waving hand-scrawled signs or screaming themselves hoarse. The size of crowds at each location varied – from dozens of people in South Dakota to 2,000 in New York. Large crowds also turned out in Connecticut, Tennessee and Texas. Some demonstrators in Phoenix and Salem, Ore., came with holstered handguns or rifles on their backs. At the Kentucky Capitol in Frankfort, attendees gave a special round of applause for "the ladies that are packin'." Activists promoted the "Guns Across America" rallies primarily through social media. They were being held just after President Barack Obama unveiled a sweeping package of federal gun-control proposals. The crowd swelled to more than 800 amid balmy temperatures on the steps of the pink-hued Capitol in Austin, where speakers took the microphone under a giant Texas flag with "Independent" stamped across it. Homemade placards read "An Armed Society is a Polite Society," "The Second Amendment Comes from God" and "Hey King O., I'm keeping my guns and my religion." "The thing that so angers me, and I think so angers you, is that this president is using children as a human shield to advance a very liberal agenda that will do nothing to protect them," said state Rep. Steve Toth, referencing last month's elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn. Toth, a first-term Republican lawmaker from The Woodlands outside Houston, has introduced legislation banning within Texas any future federal limits on assault weapons or high-capacity magazines, though such a measure would violate the U.S. Constitution. Rallies at statehouses nationwide were organized by Eric Reed, an airline captain from the Houston area who in November started a group called "More Gun Control (equals) More Crime." Its Facebook page has been "liked" by more than 17,000 people. Texas law allows concealed handgun license-holders to carry firearms anywhere, but Reed said rally-goers shouldn't expose their weapons: "I don't want anyone to get arrested." A man who identified himself only as "Texas Mob Father" carried a camouflaged assault rifle strapped to his back during the Austin rally, but he was believed to be the only one to display a gun. Radio personality Alan LaFrance told the crowd he brought a Glock 19, but he kept it out of sight. At the New York state Capitol in Albany, about 2,000 people turned out for a chilly rally, where they chanted "We the People," "USA," and "Freedom." Many carried American flags and "Don't Tread On Me" banners. The event took place four days after Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the nation's toughest assault weapon and magazine restrictions. Republican Assemblyman Steven McLaughlin said the new law was "abuse of power" by the governor. Some in the crowd carried "Impeach Cuomo" signs. Protester Robert Candea called the restrictions "an outrage against humanity." In Connecticut, where task forces created by the Legislature and Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy are considering changes to gun laws, police said about 1,000 people showed up on the Capitol grounds. One demonstrator at the rally in Maine, Joe Getchell of Pittsfield, said every law-abiding citizen has a right to bear arms. In Minnesota, where more than 500 people showed up at the Capitol in St. Paul, Republican state Rep. Tony Cornish said he would push to allow teachers to carry guns in school without a principal or superintendent's approval and to allow 21-year-olds to carry guns on college campuses. Capitol rallies also took place in Colorado, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Vermont and Wisconsin, among other states. Back in Texas, Houston resident Robert Thompson attended the rally with his wife and children, ages 12, 5 and 4. Many in the family wore T-shirts reading: "The Second Amendment Protects the First." "What we are facing now is an assault weapons ban, but if they do this, what will do they do next?" Thompson asked. William Lawson drove more than four hours from Wichita Falls and held up a sign reading "Modern Musket" over the image of an assault rifle and the words, "An American Tradition since 1776." "I'm not some wild-eyed person who wants to fight in the streets," Lawson said. "This is a country of laws. But I want to protect our Constitution." Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson conceded that the Second Amendment sometimes leads to killings, but he told the crowd that the First Amendment can be just as dangerous. Patterson said news coverage of those responsible for mass shootings can spark copy-cat shootings. "All of us here, together, are right about our liberty," Patterson said. "And we will not back down." ___ Associated Press writers Bob Christie in Phoenix, Ian Pickus in Albany, N.Y., Emery P. Dalesio, Raleigh, N.C., and Debbi Morello in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report.