French Interior Minister says crashed Germanwings plane's voice recorder damaged, but 'usable'

France's Interior Minister said Wednesday that the recovered cockpit voice recorder from Germanwings Flight 9525 had been damaged when the plane crashed, but added that he believed it to be "usable" in the investigation, while another top French official said authorities were focused on the final seconds before air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane.
Bernard Cazeneuve told RTL radio that investigators were working to pull information for the recorder, which was found hours after the Airbus A320 went down in a remote part of the French Alps Tuesday morning. The cockpit voice recorder could provide vital clues about the condition of the pilots during the plane's final plunge from a cruising height of 38,000 feet to around 6,000 feet just prior to the crash.
Meanwhile, emergency workers continued the grim task of recovering bodies and searching for the flight data recorder, the second of the so-called "black boxes," as investigators tried to piece together the many puzzles surrounding the crash that is believed to have killed all 150 passengers and crew on board.
The single-aisle, medium-haul plane operated by a subsidiary of Lufthansa was less than an hour from completing its scheduled flight to Dusseldorf from Barcelona Tuesday morning when it unexpectedly went into a rapid descent, losing contact with air traffic controllers on the ground.
Segolene Royal, France's Minister for Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy, said Wednesday that the pilots stopped responding to radio calls after 10:31 a.m. local time, about 30 minutes into the flight. She said that the seconds after 10:30 a.m. are considered vital to the investigation.
France's civil aviation authority said the pilots had not sent out a distress call before losing radio contact with their control center. Instead, the Wall Street Journal reported that air traffic controllers issued an alarm after the plane disappeared from their radar screens. Moments later, the paper reported, the French military ordered a fighter jet to the area where the plane was last tracked.
In his interview with RTL Wednesday, Cazenueve said that terrorism was not considered likely to have been the cause of the crash, though it has not been formally ruled out. That is in keeping with the stance of governments on both sides of the Atlantic. On Tuesday, National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said, "There is no indication of a nexus to terrorism at this time." The Journal reported that the French government had assigned prosecutors based in the nearby city of Marseilles to investigate the crash rather than its anti-terrorism unit, which is headquartered in Paris.
In another twist, the secretary-general of France's air traffic controllers union said that the plane did not appear to deviate from its flight plan as it went down, which is unusual for an aircraft in distress.
"If there’s a loss of control, pilots usually lose their way too," Roger Rousseau told the Journal. "That didn’t happen in this case."
"We cannot say at the moment why our colleague went into the descent, and so quickly, and without previously consulting air traffic control," Germanwings' director of flight operations, Stefan-Kenan Scheib, said Tuesday.
The wreckage was located at an altitude of about 6,550 feet at Meolans-Revels, near the popular ski resort of Pra Loup. The remote site is 430 miles south-southeast of Paris. French Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said the crash site covered several acres, with thousands of pieces of debris, "which leads us to think the impact must have been extremely violent at very high speed."
Complicating the recovery and investigation is the inaccessibility of the site by road, forcing emergency workers to choose between hiking up from a base established in a nearby village or rappelling down from helicopters unable to land on the uneven terrain.

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In spirit of Revolutionary War, students win right to hold “American Pride” dance

Patriotic teenagers in the birthplace of the American Revolution held their ground and fought back attempts by school administrators to cancel an “American Pride” dance on April 10 and replace it with a more inclusive event.
Students at Lexington High School in Massachusetts said the administration had canceled their plans for a red, white and blue dance because it excluded other nationalities. Instead, the administration suggested a more inclusive “National Pride” dance.

Heaven forbid the administrators be caught trying to promote American patriotism.

“It was suggested by the advisors that the students come in – maybe (a) National Pride theme so that they could represent their individual nationalities,” Asst. Supt. Carol Pilarski told television station WHDH. “Maybe it should be more inclusive and it should be ‘National Pride.’”
Word of the administration’s objections to an American-themed dance spread across town like the shot heard round the world.
“(It’s) a lot of hypersensitivity to being politically correct,” one student told the television station.
“People consider America to be a melting pot,” said another student. “So the fact that it was even considered offensive is what people are a little surprised about.”
Principal Laura Lasa told me the April 10th dance had never been canceled. They merely wanted to “dialogue” with students about inclusivity.
“We were in a conversation with the kids about how the theme would be presented so that we could make sure that it was inclusive to all students,” Lasa said. “they took that as being told they could not.”
In other words, the grownups in the room tried to talk the kids out of paying homage to the red, white and blue.
“We want to make sure kids do not feel they can’t go to a dance because of whatever the theme is,” she said.
Over the weekend, Lasa said administrators listened carefully to the feedback they received and on Monday, March 23 they decided to let the kids stick with the “American Pride” theme.
“We’re supporting that student decision,” the principal told me.
Notice how she phrased that – the “student” decision?
“We’re going forward with supporting their theme of American Pride,” she added.
Again, notice the emphasis on “their” theme? It’s not the school’s theme. It’s the students’ theme. Heaven forbid the administrators be caught trying to promote American patriotism.
“We’re being mindful of the fact that we want kids to have pride in America, and also the fact we have students from all over the world that move to Lexington,” she said.
First it was the Red Coats – and now the good people of Lexington have to fight off an invading horde of un-American educators.
Where’s Paul Revere when you need him – riding through the countryside shouting “The liberals are coming. The liberals are coming.”

Sen. Ted Cruz announces presidential bid, vows to 'stand for liberty'

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, ticking off a litany of President Obama policies he opposes, promised Monday to return to a government by Constitution and "stand for liberty" as he officially announced his 2016 presidential bid. 
Cruz, speaking to an energetic crowd of students at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., drew from his background to address his faith and what he sees for the future of the country.
As the first major presidential candidate to officially declare, he told the crowd to “imagine a president that finally, finally, finally secures the borders” and drew applause when he promised to “stand up and defeat radical Islamic terrorism.”
READ THE TRANSCRIPT.
Cruz continued his pledge by telling the crowd to “imagine a president who says I will honor the Constitution and under no circumstances will Iran be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon.”

More on this...

• Cruz for president: What are his chances?

• Will Ted Cruz throw his hat in the 2016 ring?

• Can Ted Cruz become GOP 2016 front-runner?

He also urged the crowd to imagine a simple flat tax. He added, “imagine abolishing the IRS.”
Cruz spoke on the fifth anniversary of Obama's health care law -- legislation that prompted Cruz to stand for more than 21 hours in the Senate to denounce it in a marathon speech that delighted his Tea Party constituency and other foes of the law. Cheers rose in the hall when Cruz reminded the crowd Monday that Liberty University filed a suit against the law right after its enactment.
"It's time to get in there," Cruz told Fox News' Sean Hannity Monday night. "and it's time to start making the case that we've got to change what we're doing. I think there is an urgency to what we're facing in politics that's unlike anything you or I have ever seen before. I think it's now or never. I don't think we've reached the point of no return yet, but we are close."
"We [Republicans] have to win in November 2016," Cruz added later in the program. "We cannot have four or eight more years of going down this road."
Cruz, a divisive figure in his own party, is not expected to be the sole GOP contender for long.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and two Senate colleagues, Kentucky's Rand Paul and Florida's Marco Rubio, are eyeing campaign launches soon.
Paul, also a first-term senator, told Megyn Kelly Monday on "The Kelly File" that he believes he is more capable of expanding the Republican Party's appeal to independents. He also claimed that, among GOP candidates, he's polling better against Hillary Clinton, a potential Democratic 2016 rival, and hinted that he could announce a presidential bid early next month.
"We'll have some kind of a decision on April 7," he told Kelly.
For his announcement, Cruz bypassed Texas, which he represents in the Senate, as well as early nominating states such as New Hampshire, where Mitt Romney kicked off his own campaign for the GOP nomination in 2012, and Iowa.
By getting in early -- and at Liberty -- Cruz was hoping to claim ownership of the influential and highly vocal corner of the Republican Party for whom cultural issues are supreme. It was a move at crowding out figures such as former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor, and former Sen. Rick Santorum, who has made his Catholic faith a cornerstone of his political identity.
Cruz earlier declared his candidacy via a Twitter post early Monday, becoming the first major candidate to officially declare.
A 30-second video accompanying the tweet featured Cruz speaking over a montage of farm fields, city skylines and American landmarks and symbols, calling on "a new generation of courageous conservatives to help make America great again."
"I'm ready to stand with you to lead the fight," Cruz says as the video concludes. Shortly after midnight Monday, the campaign had launched its website.
Cruz's father, a pastor, is also expected to help the 44-year-old first-term senator make inroads with these voters.
Cruz is already a familiar figure on the circuit for presidential hopefuls, having made repeated visits to the early voting states, the big conservative activist conferences and more. This month, for example, he met party activists in New Hampshire, which hosts the leadoff primary. It's just that, like other presidential prospects, he's been coy about what he's doing. That coyness ends Monday as he jumps full in.
By announcing what has long been obvious, Cruz triggers a host of accounting and reporting requirements about money he is raising and how he is spending it. To this point, he had operated his political organization through a non-presidential committee that worked under different rules. By officially joining the race, he now operates under a more stringent set of rules, including being able to accept fewer dollars from each supporter.
Following his election to the Senate in 2012, the former Texas solicitor general quickly established himself as an uncompromising conservative willing to take on Democrats and Republicans alike. Criticized by members of his own party at times, he won praise from tea party activists for leading the GOP's push to shut the federal government during an unsuccessful bid to block money for President Barack Obama's health care law.
The son of an American mother and Cuban-born father, Cruz is positioning himself to become potentially the nation's first Hispanic president. While he was born in Canada, two lawyers who represented presidents from both parties at the Supreme Court recently wrote in the Harvard Law Review that they think Cruz meets the constitutional standard to run.
Should he fail to win the nomination or the presidency, Cruz would retain his Senate seat through 2019. He also could elect to run for re-election in 2018, having broadened his national network of allies and donors during this presidential campaign.

Congress launching hearings on complaints businesses targeted by 'Operation Choke Point'

A controversial federal law enforcement program that critics say targeted businesses the Obama administration didn't like is about to face a new wave of congressional scrutiny, with Capitol Hill hearings set to begin Tuesday. 
Under the program, called Operation Choke Point, banks and other financial institutions were reportedly pressured to cut off accounts for targeted businesses. This included gun stores, casinos, tobacco distributors, short-term lenders and other businesses.
Critics claim the program -- overseen by the Justice Department, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and other agencies -- was used to squeeze legal companies that some politicians considered morally objectionable.
"Our concern is you have agencies in the Obama administration that are using government as a weapon and they going after industries and people that they don't like," said Republican Rep. Sean Duffy, who co-chairs the Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. "This is not the old Soviet Union or Venezuela or Cuba. I think it's important for all Americans to stand up and push back on policies that are an abuse of government."
The subcommittee hearings are expected to begin midday Tuesday. More may be scheduled in the future.
Brennan Appel, owner of Global Hookah Distributors, said he realized he was a victim of Operation Choke Point after he got a letter from Bank of America telling him that after 12 years of working together, it was closing all his business and personal accounts.
"I thought that it had to be a mistake," he said. "How could something like this happen when you've been with a bank since 2002 and you've had such a great relationship? With no explanation as to what you did wrong, you can only make assumptions. I'm running a legal business. I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm following the laws so why are my accounts being closed like this for absolutely, in my opinion, no reason?" Appel said.
Appel said a few months later, his payment-processing company also dropped him. "I started this business when I was 18 years old, funded my way through college with it and have continued on growing the company into what it is today. And I feel like, why do you get punished when you are growing a company?"
Appel began recording his conversations with Alex Bacon, the president of EFT which was his payment processor. He wanted to prove he was the target of Operation Choke Point.
An excerpt from one conversation showed the program being specifically mentioned:

Bacon:  "Have you heard of a little thing, you know, called Chokepoint, you know the CFPB?" 

Appel : "Yes ... yes." 

Bacon : "They're taking aim at industries like you and others to eliminate you from business by choking off your payment processing."

Another conversation seems to underscore the fear among the financial industry (financial institutions reportedly were told they would face increased audits and scrutiny if they kept accounts for targeted businesses):

Bacon: "I'm an independent, third-party payment processor, and I, I, I act at the will and directive of my processing bank. If my processing bank says, 'no, you can't do this,' there's nothing I can do." 

Appel: "Yeah." 

Bacon: "There's literally nothing I can do." 

Appel: "And they're the one that's getting forced ..." 

Bacon: "Well, they're the ones that are on the front line, they're the ones that uh, that the Chokepoint people are going after." 

Appel: "Yeah, because they probably tell them, if you don't do this, we're going to make your life ..." 

Bacon: "We're going to make your life miserable. Instead of auditing you once a year, we're going to audit you four times a year, and then we're going to come in and look at all of this and then if we find anything negative, we're going to write it up and then you're going to incur increased costs, increased uh focus with your board of directors, and from other banking regulators. And they all run scared because they're all sheep." 

Appel turned the recordings over to the U.S. Consumer Coalition, which has taken on the Operation Choke Point issue. The coalition, which is not a government entity, began working with members of Congress on it.
Several members of Congress have openly called Operation Choke Point a blatant abuse of power, and an example of government bureaucrats appointing themselves morality police so they could operate around the law.
Duffy and other lawmakers plan to question FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg about Operation Choke Point and its intention.
In response to the controversy, the FDIC put out a statement which said in part: "It is the FDIC's policy that insured institutions that properly manage customer relationships are neither prohibited nor discouraged from providing services to any customer operating in compliance with applicable law ... the FDIC has a responsibility to cooperate with other government agencies and to ensure that the banks we supervise are adhering to laws, including those governing anti-money laundering and terrorist financing."
Initially, the FDIC put out a list of 30 high-risk businesses, but that list has since been rescinded.
The U.S. Consumer Coalition claimed taking down that list only removed a guideline, and without a specific list of businesses, the subjectivity of who gets targeted was increased.
Brian Wise, with the U.S. Consumer Coalition, points out the irony. "By shutting down the bank accounts of these legally operating businesses, what they're actually doing is forcing these businesses to deal solely in cash, which is completely opposite of what they have said their intention is," he said. "It's a whole lot easier to launder money with cash than having to go through a financial institution."
Wise said questioning the chairman of the FDIC is a good start, but the problem doesn't end there. "We know that it doesn't just stop with the FDIC. This is a program that includes the CFPB, FDIC, Department of Justice and may lead all the way up to the president," he said.
Appel has found a new bank to handle his businesses for now, but has opened several backup accounts in case his new bank drops him as well.  

Seattle restaurant industry warns of fallout as $15 minimum wage nears

Seattle restaurants are warning that the looming hike in the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour could soon force them to cut back their staffs and raise prices. 
For an industry with a slim profit margin to start with, the wage hike could have a profound effect, even as supporters say it will benefit the economy in the long run.
The increase, up from $9.32 an hour, is set to be phased in starting April 1. The initial minimum wage will be $11 an hour. Employers with 500 or fewer workers must increase their pay to $15 an hour by January 2019. Larger employers, having 501 or more workers, have just two years to raise their worker compensation to $15.
Many owners are concerned over what the changes will mean for business.
“It will be difficult to staff the front of the house as well as we have before,” Brendan McGill, the chef and owner of the Hitchcock Restaurant Group, told FoxNews.com.
Although McGill supports the minimum wage increase, he noted that, “less people will be fighting over each other to fill up your water.”
The Seattle Restaurant Alliance worked with a mayoral task force from the beginning in an attempt to find a compromise benefiting both restaurants and workers, Anthony Anton, CEO of the Washington Restaurant Association, told FoxNews.com. However, his association did not support the final outcome and is now warning about the impact.
The looming wage hike ensures the model for how local restaurants operate is going to change. It used to be that 36 percent of profits go to labor, with 30 percent for food and 30 percent for any other expenses. This leaves about a 4 percent profit margin for most restaurants. With such a big wage hike, restaurant owners are looking for new ways to keep that profit. This means looking at raising prices, having fewer employees, using automated ordering systems, changing tipping models, and more, Anton said.
“It won’t be one thing. This is too big a change to have a silver bullet,” Anton said.
In a survey conducted in 2014 by the Washington Restaurant Association, the top four responses of what restaurants predict they would have to do were: raise prices, lay off employees, reduce employee hours or close their business entirely.
Anton predicts the Seattle restaurant industry may experiment heavily with the newer automated ordering systems as well, but it is still too early to tell what will ultimately work.
The 15Now movement, however, is in full support of raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Ty Moore, the 15Now national organizer, told FoxNews.com that “15Now had a central role in initiating and organizing the grassroots pressure campaign in Seattle.”
The movement really took off in Seattle after the 2013 campaign and election of Kshama Sawant to the Seattle City Council as a “socialist alternative” candidate. 15Now’s prediction, according to Moore, is that any job losses that do happen will be more than compensated for by job gains because they are putting more wages in workers’ pockets. These sorts of changes were seen in San Francisco where they led the way in city-wide wage increases, according to Moore.
When asked if 15Now thinks the new increase could negatively affect small businesses, Moore pointed to the provision where smaller businesses have two extra years to increase their wage to $15 for each employee.
In September, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray proposed a new division of the Seattle Office of Civil Rights -- called the Office of Labor Standards – to focus on educating the community about new requirements including the minimum wage rules, paid sick leave and other worker policies. A senior policy analyst told FoxNews.com that the Seattle Office for Civil Rights has been receiving hundreds of calls from employers in the Seattle area who are eager to comply and learn more about the wage increase ordinance.

Courtesy Of The Red, White And Blue (The Angry American)

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McCain to Obama: 'Get over your temper tantrum, Mr. President' and focus on ISIS

Sen. John McCain said Sunday that President Obama is letting his personal issues with newly re-elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu affect his decision-making and shared policy goals.
“It’s time that we work together with our Israeli friends and try to stem the tide of ISIS and Iranian movement throughout the region, which is threatening the very fabric of the region,” McCain, R-Ariz.,  said on CNN's “State of the Union.”
During the interview, McCain called out Obama and told him: “Get over your temper tantrum, Mr. President.”
McCain went on to admonish the administration’s Middle East policies and said Obama’s priorities are “so screwed up that it’s unbelievable.” He added that he was “convinced” Obama was letting his personal feelings get in the way.
McCain added that Israel is the only nation in the region “where there was a free and fair democratic election” and told and said “the least of your problems is what Bibi Netanyahu said during an election campaign.”
McCain added that “Bibi’s rhetoric concerning an election campaign pales in comparison to the direct threat to the United States of America of ISIS.
“But the point is, is the J.V., as the president described them, is just moving over into Yemen.  We see this horrible situation in Libya.  We see ISIS everywhere in the world,” he said.
Democratic Rep. Steve Israel, also a guest on the show, suggested everyone drop the drama and get back to the fundamentals.
“What counts is, are we providing Israel with the critical security equipment technology that they need? And on that, we are,” he said.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said Sunday that the new Israeli government will have to serve "all the citizens of Israel," and called for the country to begin a "healing process" after a stormy election campaign that highlighted deep internal divisions.
In a last-ditch attempt to spur his supporters to the polls last week, Netanyahu warned that Arab citizens were voting "in droves" and endangering years of rule by his right-wing Likud Party. The comments drew accusations of racism from Israeli Arabs and a White House rebuke.
Alluding to the uproar, Rivlin told Likud representatives that the emerging government will have to serve "all the citizens of Israel, Jews and Arabs."

Battle flag at center of Supreme Court free speech case

Texas commemorates the Confederacy in many ways, from an annual celebration of Confederate Heroes Day each January to monuments on the grounds of the state Capitol in Austin. Among the memorials is one that has stood for more than a century, bearing an image of the Confederate battle flag etched in marble.
But you're out of luck if you want to put that flag on your license plate. Texas says that would be offensive.
Now the Supreme Court will decide whether the state can refuse to issue a license plate featuring the battle flag without violating the free-speech rights of Texans who want one. The justices hear arguments Monday in a challenge brought by the Texas division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
The group sued over the state's decision not to authorize its proposed license plate with its logo bearing the battle flag, similar to plates issued by eight other states that were members of the Confederacy and Maryland.
The First Amendment dispute has brought together some unlikely allies, including the American Civil Liberties Union, anti-abortion groups, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, civil libertarian Nat Hentoff and conservative satirist P.J. O'Rourke.
"In a free society, offensive speech should not just be tolerated, its regular presence should be celebrated as a symbol of democratic health -- however odorous the products of a democracy may be," Hentoff, O'Rourke and others said in a brief backing the group.
Specialty plates are moneymakers for states, and Texas offers more than 350 varieties that took in $17.6 million last year, according to the state Department of Motor Vehicles. Nearly 877,000 vehicles among more than 19 million cars, pickup trucks and motorcycles registered in Texas carry a specialty plate, the department said.
They bear messages that include "Choose Life," "God Bless Texas" and "Fight Terrorism," as well as others in support of Dr. Pepper, burrito and burger chains, Boy Scouts, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, blood donations, professional sports teams and colleges.
A state motor vehicle board rejected the Sons of Confederate Veterans application because of concerns it would offend many Texans who believe the flag is a racially charged symbol of repression. On the same day, the board approved a plate honoring the nation's first black Army units, the Buffalo Soldiers, despite objections from Native Americans over the units' roles in fighting Indian tribes in the West in the late 1800s.
"There are a lot of competing racial and ethnic concerns, and Texas doesn't necessarily handle them any way but awkwardly sometimes," said Lynne Rambo, a professor at the Texas A&M University School of Law in Fort Worth.
A panel of federal appeals court judges ruled that the board's decision violated the group's First Amendment rights. "We understand that some members of the public find the Confederate flag offensive. But that fact does justify the board's decision," Judge Edward Prado of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans wrote.
Texas' main argument to the Supreme Court is that the license plate is not like a bumper sticker slapped on the car by its driver. Instead, the state said, license plates are government property, and so what appears on them is not private individuals' speech but the government's. The First Amendment applies when governments try to regulate the speech of others, but not when governments are doing the talking.
Even if the court disagrees that license plates are government speech, the state said its rejection of the Sons of Confederate Veterans license plate was not discriminatory. The motor vehicle board had not approved a plate denigrating the Confederacy or the battle flag so it could not be accused of giving voice to one viewpoint while suppressing another, the state said.
The ACLU suggested that the court view license plates as a mix of private and government speech. For example, drivers who seek a personal touch and buy the specialized plates know the government has approved their issuance.
Federal appeals courts around the country have come to differing conclusions on the issue, in part because there are few Supreme Court cases to guide them. In 1977, the Supreme Court ruled that people can't be compelled to display license plates that carry messages to which they object. The ruling in the Wooley v. Maynard case concerned New Hampshire residents who disagreed with the state's "Live Free or Die" motto.
New Hampshire is among 11 states that are supporting Texas because they fear that a ruling against the state would call into question license plates that promote national and state pride and specific positions on such controversial issues as abortion.
A decision in Walker v. Sons of Confederate Veterans, 14-144, is expected by late June.