Gun Control Cartoon

Education Secretary Arne Duncan resigning

Education Secretary Arne Duncan is leaving his post in December, Fox News confirmed Friday. 
Duncan has spent seven years in the Obama administration. President Obama has named Education Department official John King Jr. as acting secretary through the end of his term. 
In an email to his staff, Duncan said he's returning to Chicago to live with his family. He said he isn't sure what he will do next, but that he hopes his future will "continue to involve the work of expanding opportunity for children."
Sidestepping a nomination fight in Congress, Obama has tapped John King Jr., a senior official at the Education Department, to run the department in an acting capacity for the remainder of his administration. Obama doesn't intend to nominate King or another candidate for education secretary before his presidency ends in early 2017, said a White House official, who wasn't authorized to comment by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The unconventional approach will spare Obama a fight over a nominee in the Senate but is likely to draw resistance from Republicans in the Senate, which holds the power to confirm or reject nominees for Cabinet-level posts.
"John comes to this role with a record of exceptional accomplishment as a lifelong educator -- a teacher, a school leader, and a leader of school systems," Duncan said in an email to department officials obtained by The Associated Press.
Duncan is one of just a few remaining members of Obama's original cabinet. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Office of Management and Budget director Shaun Donovan have also served in the Cabinet since the first term. Donovan, however, first served as secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
Duncan came to Washington from Chicago, where he ran the city's public school system. As part of the Chicago cohort that followed Obama to Washington, Duncan is one of few Cabinet members who has a personal relationship with the president. A basketball player at Harvard University who played professionally in Australia, Duncan was once a regular in Obama's weekend basketball games.
As secretary, Duncan prioritized K-12 education and made his first signature initiative the Race to the Top program, in which states competed for federal grants. The program became a flashpoint in the fight over federal involvement in education. Critics argued it encouraged states to adopt the Common Core, a controversial set of curriculum guidelines that become symbolic of federal overreach.
Duncan showed little patience for criticism of the program and the standards. In 2014, he cast critics as "white suburban moms who -- all of a sudden -- their child isn't as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn't quite as good as they thought they were, and that's pretty scary." Duncan later said he regretted the "clumsy phrasing."
In his senior Education Department role with the peculiar title of delegated deputy secretary, King oversees preschool through high school education and manages the department's operations. He was previously state education commissioner in New York, running the state's public schools and universities.

Trump: Gun laws have ‘nothing to do’ with Oregon shooting

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump says Thursday’s shooting at a community college in Oregon can be blamed solely on mental illness.
“The gun laws have nothing to do with this,” Trump told ABC News on Friday, when asked about stricter gun regulations.
“This isn't guns, this is about really mental illness. And I feel very strongly about it,” he added.
The business mogul said difficulties in dealing with people with mental problems are unavoidable.
“Even if you had great education having to deal with mental illness. You educate the community — you're going to have people that slip through the cracks," he said.
Trump told MSNBC earlier Friday that school shootings are a phenomenon isolated to the U.S. “We have millions of sick people all over the world,” he said. “This is sort of unique to our country — the school shootings.”

“You’re always going to have problems,” the businessman added on MSNBC. “That’s the way the world works. For the next million years, people will slip through the cracks.”
Chris Harper Mercer, 26, killed 10 and injured seven in the Thursday shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore.

Murderer Chris Harper Merce

Sources: Chaffetz to seek speaker bid against McCarthy

Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah is planning to run for House speaker in a surprise longshot challenge to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, according to three Republican aides with knowledge of the situation.
Chaffetz chairs the Oversight and Government Reform Committee and has led high-profile hearings on the Secret Service, Planned Parenthood and other issues.
In recent days he's been highly critical of McCarthy over comments the majority leader made suggesting political motives for the House committee investigating the 2012 attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.
Chaffetz' office did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but Chaffetz plans to appear on Fox News Sunday to "announce his decision to run for House speaker," according to that network.
The aides who confirmed his plans demanded anonymity to discuss them ahead of a public announcement. The news was first reported by Politico.
Chaffetz' plans injects new turmoil into the House GOP just a week after Speaker John Boehner shocked Capitol Hill by announcing he would resign rather than face a tea party-backed floor vote on his speakership.
But Chaffetz' entry into the race would come less than a week before the Oct. 8 elections and with McCarthy seen as the commanding favorite, despite Republicans' discomfort over the Californian's boast this week that the Benghazi committee could take credit for Hillary Rodham Clinton's lagging poll numbers. Clinton is the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.
McCarthy subsequently said he regretted the comment and did not mean to imply the committee is political because it is not. But Democrats pounced and said the remarks revealed the Benghazi committee is a political witch hunt.
In an appearance Friday on conservative host Sean Hannity's radio show, Chaffetz pledged a strong fight for conservative goals.
"Speaker Boehner, bless his heart, has done some good stuff, he got rid of earmarks .. but I'm tired of not actually getting to the end zone, I want to actually change the trajectory, I don't want to say we coulda woulda shoulda I want to score touchdowns."

Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey says 'fellow Christians' should arm themselves

Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey responded to the mass shooting at an Oregon community college in a Facebook post Friday saying that “fellow Christians” should consider getting a handgun carry permit to protect themselves.
In his Facebook posting, Ramsey, who is also speaker of the Tennessee senate, said the recent spate of mass shootings around the nation is “truly troubling.”
The Blountville Republican said, "whether the perpetrators are motivated by aggressive secularism, jihadist extremism or racial supremacy, their targets remain the same: Christians and defenders of the West."
"I would encourage my fellow Christians who are serious about their faith to think about getting a handgun carry permit," Ramsey wrote. "I have always believed that it is better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it. Our enemies are armed. We must do likewise."
Ramsey provided a link on how to obtain a handgun permit in Tennessee at the end of his posting. The Tennessean reported that Ramsey also posted a link to a New York Post article with the headline “Oregon gunman singled out Christian during rampage.” He also seemed to group other mass shootings with Thursday’s Oregon shooting.
Democratic state Rep. John Ray Clemmons of Nashville said in a statement Ramsey’s comments “reek of fear mongering and religious crusading.”
"There is an eerie absence of logic in his statement that ties one's Christian faith to firearms ownership that is offensive to all religions," Clemmons said. "Senator Ramsey is essentially saying that we should all run out and get a handgun carry permit to prove how serious we are about our Christian faith."
Authorities say Christopher Harper Mercer killed nine people at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg before he was killed in exchange of gunfire with police. Witnesses said the gunman specifically targeted Christians.
Kortney Moore, 18, told the Roseburg News-Review that she was in a writing class when one shot came through the window. Moore said she saw her teacher get shot in the head. The shooter reportedly told the students to get on the ground before asking people to stand up and state their religion. He then began firing. Moore said she was lying on the ground with people who had been shot.
Janet Willis told the Los Angeles Times that her 18-year-old granddaughter, Ana Boylan, had been shot in the back. Willis said Boyland told her that the gunman asked others in the classroom to rise and state their religion.
"If they said they were Christians, they were shot again," Willis said. "[Boylan and another wounded girl] just laid on the ground and pretended they were dead."

Islam Cartoon

GOP candidate Ben Carson goes after Muslim advocacy group's tax status

Republican Ben Carson has started a petition calling on the IRS to target the nation's largest Muslim advocacy group. 
The retired neurosurgeon accused the Council on American-Islamic Relations on Thursday of violating its nonprofit tax status in a Facebook message. Carson said the organization "brazenly violated IRS rules" when it called last month for him to leave the 2016 presidential race.
"Under the Obama administration, the IRS has systematically targeted conservative nonprofit groups for politically motivated audits and harassment," Carson wrote. "The agency should now properly do its job and punish the real violators of America's laws and regulations."
The Council on American-Islamic Relations lashed out at Carson after he said he would not support a Muslim president.
Carson's fortunes were on the rise before he made the remark and continued to surge afterward. Campaign manager Barry Bennett said Carson raised roughly $700,000 in the 36 hours after he made the comment.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations denied any wrongdoing.
"We find it interesting that Dr. Carson seeks to use a federal government agency to silence his critics and wonder if that tactic would be used to suppress First Amendment freedoms should he become president," spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said.

Jeb shifts attacks to Rubio

JEB SHIFTS ATTACKS TO RUBIO
Under pressure, Jeb Bush is hitting harder than ever against Sen. Marco Rubio, as Bush’s one time protégé surpasses him in the polls.

On the trail in New Hampshire Wednesday, Bush compared Rubio’s campaign message to that of President Obama and warned of a similar result if Rubio was elected. Pressed on his comments today in an interview with MSNBC, Bush went further.

Bush said Rubio lacked the “leadership skills” and said that Rubio would not be able to “fix things” in Washington.

It comes at a difficult moment for Bush as Russian strongman Vladimir Putin has, ahem, “reset” the 2016 presidential race.

Russia’s offensive in Syria is a threshold moment that history will long record. Rather than just the ongoing efforts to reestablish “Great Russia” through the subduction of weak neighbor states and veiled (if thinly) military maneuvers, this is open aggression in a contested territory in the worst neighborhood in the world.

And Putin’s military began the operations by targeting American-backed forces. When Moscow targets American proxies in a Third World hellhole, you know we’re all the way back to the bad old days.

But as history collides with the venality of the 2016 presidential contests, it means particular problems for certain candidates, Bush among them. While he has recently embraced the idea that he is best situated to lead U.S. foreign affairs because he is “a Bush,” sorting out his brother’s Middle East legacy has proved, so far, intractable.

As Bush comes to closer embrace his brother’s foreign policy, discussing how best to escalate a ground war in the region is a huge problem.

Painting Rubio as unready and unsteady won’t be an easy task for Bush, though. He’s on the record from 2012 explicitly saying Rubio was more experienced than Obama and pushed Rubio as Mitt Romney’s running mate.

But Bush’s shift from trying to engage with frontrunner Donald Trump to fourth-place Rubio is likely necessary given the worries that Bush’s early backers may abandon him for the ascendant Rubio.