Conaway, Schiff Issue Joint Statement on Russia Investigation
Michael K. Conaway (R-TX, 11th)
May 11, 2017
“The House Intelligence Committee is determined to move forward with its Russia investigation in a thorough and nonpartisan fashion. As a part of our responsibilities, we will be conducting rigorous oversight to ensure that the FBI's own investigation is not impeded or interfered with in any way."
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Congressional Progressive Caucus Leaders Oppose Trump Administration’s Discriminatory Targeting of Haitian Refugees
John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI, 13th)
May 11, 2017
“The Temporary Protected Status Program is a humanitarian program meant to protect individuals from returning to unsafe conditions in their home country. The Trump administration’s request that the Department of Homeland Security pursue inquiries into the criminal records of Haitian immigrants before deciding whether to continue humanitarian protections for tens of thousands of people threatens the livelihood of many Haitians. This marks an unprecedented and disturbing new development in President Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda.”
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Well Armed Women: Promoting gun safety and awareness in Gibson County
Princeton Daily Clarion
May 15, 2017
Educate. Equip. Empower. That is the motto of The Well Armed Woman Gibson County chapter, dedicated to helping women protect themselves and have a little fun as well.
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Could you run a business and homeschool 12 kids?
Richmond:Palladium-Item
May 15, 2017
"I've told the kids that if at any time (Craig or) I feel like we can't handle it, that (school) comes first," she said. "Homeschooling has been a priority for us for 25 years now. They are learning, to be sure. But being involved in this business is also part of the educational experience for our kids."
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News Bytes to Ponder...(horses, water, firearms, guns, maternity, outsourcing, Medicaid, illegal immigrants, )

A coalition of leading animal welfare groups has endorsed bipartisan legislation introduced by Congressman Vern Buchanan to permanently ban the killing of horses for human consumption in America and end the export of live horses to Mexican and Canadian slaughterhouses.

The SAFE Act (Safeguard American Food Exports) is co-sponsored by Reps. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., Ed Royce, R-Calif., and Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-N.M.

Congressman Ken Buck (CO-04) introduced H.R. 519, the Water and Agriculture Tax Reform Act of 2017 (WATER Act), a key legislative priority that Buck shepherded through committee last year and hopes to see on the House Floor in the 115th Congress. The legislation permits mutual water and storage delivery companies to retain their non-profit status even if they receive more than 15% of their revenue from non-member sources. The additional non-member revenue raised under the act must be used for maintenance, operations, and infrastructure improvements. By allowing these companies to raise additional revenue from non-members, they can invest in infrastructure improvements that allow them to offer more affordable water resources to their members.

Freshman Representative Ted Budd co-sponsored the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017. This bill provides law-abiding citizens with concealed carry permits the legal protection to carry in other states that recognize their own residents’ right to concealed carry.

The House of Representatives passed the Improving Access to Maternity Care Act (H.R. 315), introduced by Congressman Michael C. Burgess M.D. (R-TX), Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-CA), and Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA). The Improving Access to Maternity Care Act would increase data collection by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to help place maternity care health professionals working in the National Health Service Corps (NHSC) throughout geographic regions experiencing a health professional shortage.


Congresswoman Cheri Bustos (IL-17) introduced her first piece of legislation in the 115th Congress, continuing her focus on growing our economy and boosting our region’s manufacturing industry. She also held a press conference with House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and colleagues from the industrial heartland to discuss the legislation.

The Overseas Outsourcing Accountability Act would require President-elect Donald Trump to develop a national strategy to stop outsourcing and allow Congress to measure its success through a review every two years. This legislation does not require Trump to follow a prescribed path; however, it would rein in his inconsistent behavior by requiring him to put a real strategy down on paper for working families to evaluate.

U.S. Representatives G. K. Butterfield (NC-01), David E. Price (NC-04), and Alma Adams (NC-12), the Democratic members of North Carolina’s congressional delegation, sent a letter to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in strong support of a State Plan Amendment to expand Medicaid in the State of North Carolina.

Medicaid expansion is a core provision of the Affordable Care Act. Under North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper’s proposal, North Carolina will receive $4 billion in federal funding while saving over $330 million in uncompensated care. Studies have shown that expanding Medicaid in North Carolina will provide access to care for over half a million state residents, streamline care delivery, and create tens of thousands of new jobs.

Congressman Ken Calvert (CA-42) reintroduced legislation aimed at preventing criminal illegal immigrants from being released from custody. The Help Ensure Legal Detainers (HELD) Act, H.R. 514, would require localities to adhere to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers.

U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., and U.S. Representative Earl L. "Buddy" Carter, R-Ga.-01, introduced legislation in both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives to expand and protect Fort Frederica National Monument located on St. Simons Island, Ga.

Rep. Jeff Duncan (SC-03) along with Rep. John Carter (TX-31) introduced a bill to cut through the red tape on owning firearm suppressors. The Duncan-Carter Hearing Protection Act will remove suppressors from the scope of the National Firearms Act (NFA), replacing the outdated federal transfer process with an instantaneous National Instant Criminal Background Check )NICS). The bill also includes a provision to refund the $200 transfer tax to applicants who purchase a suppressor after October 22, 2015, which was the original date of introduction. In stark contrast, many countries in Europe place no regulations on their purchase, possession, or use.

How Donald Trump Can Make Second Amendment Great Again

December 7, 2016 (The Ponder News) -- Pledging to protect the Second Amendment is what brought millions of beleaguered American firearms owners to the polls Nov. 8 to elect Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States, and one thing Trump can do to assure them that he deserves their trust would be to instruct his attorney general early in 2017 to name a special assistant whose job would be to protect Second Amendment rights.

Over the years, the Department of Justice has taken action against various other civil and constitutional rights abuses. It is time for the DOJ to prosecute violations of the Second Amendment and federal laws including the Firearms Owners Protection Act. The next attorney general should take action against states and local governments that adopt laws designed specifically to infringe on the rights of honest firearms owners or discourage people from exercising their right to keep and bear arms for legitimate reasons, including self-defense.

For too many years, cities including Washington, D.C. and Chicago, and states including New Jersey, New York and Maryland have prosecuted firearms owners, including those in transit from other states, for actions that would be legal anywhere else in the nation. This must cease, and those states must be held accountable for their abuses.

Egregious laws have been adopted also in California, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Illinois. Bans on certain commonly-owned firearms in all of these states began as simple licensing and/or registration requirements. Earlier this year, for example, anti-gun Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey unilaterally decided to expand the definition of “assault weapon” in the Bay State, essentially rendering tens of thousands of legally-owned firearms as contraband. Her claim that the state law on “assault weapons” has been misinterpreted for the past 18 years, and that she was merely correcting that problem is specious at best.

California is another example of a state where rights have been gradually eroded to the point where owning a firearm has become little more than a privilege. The state initially banned a limited number of firearms, and has gradually expanded that to cover a whole class of firearms, making previously legal firearms illegal. A deputy U.S. attorney general could bring the full force of the Justice Department against such demagoguery.

That all of this has been done under the guise of “gun safety” is an insult to the intelligence of gun owners. They see their rights have been infringed, and they deserve to have those rights protected and defended by the Justice Department rather than surrendered piecemeal to gun control extremism.

It should not simply be up to gun rights organizations like the Second Amendment Foundation to challenge such laws while the Justice Department acts like a spectator.

It would also be the task of this special assistant AG to make sure the DOJ does not take anti-Second Amendment positions on any legal action. This individual would also serve as a liaison with gun rights organizations, working with them rather than against them to assure that the nation’s laws are used to prosecute criminals rather than persecute law-abiding gun owners.

This assistant AG could work with members of Congress and gun rights organizations to restore funding for the long-neglected rights restoration investigations that once were conducted by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

President-elect Trump pledged to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the untimely death of Justice Antonin Scalia with someone who shared his view that the Second Amendment protects an individual civil right not contingent with service in some militia. At some point, the high court must address the right to bear arms, sending a message to state governments that a right so encumbered by Draconian restrictions that its exercise is impossible is not a right at all, but a prohibitively-regulated privilege.

Donald Trump has been given an opportunity to right so many of the wrongs that have been committed against millions of citizens whose only crime has been a wish to exercise their constitutionally-delineated civil rights. They helped to make him president and it is time for the government to treat them as the first class citizens they are and have always been.

It is time to make the Second Amendment great again.

Alan Gottlieb and Dave Workman are co-authors of “Right To Carry,” published by Merril Press. Gottlieb is founder of the Second Amendment Foundation. Workman is Senior Editor of The Gun Mag.com.

TSA, Abused Children, Guns, Mental Health, Energy, Healthcare

Following two House Homeland Security inquiries this week into the growing TSA wait lines at airports around the country, Representative John Katco (R-NY, 24th) introduced the bipartisan Checkpoint Optimization and Efficiency Act of 2016, to overhaul TSA bureaucracy and help relieve congestion at airports as peak travel season approaches. The legislation directly addresses the efficiency of the TSA, as well as the current, flawed staffing model used by this agency.

Specifically, the legislation introduced by Representative Katko would:

Grant TSA the flexibility to utilize all personnel present to compensate for long wait lines, including reallocating Behavior Detection Officers to speed up passenger screening efforts and granting greater authority to Federal Security Directors, who know the individual airport best, to make staffing resource decisions.

Ensure that private stakeholders, airports, and government regulators are coordinating response through a staffing advisory committee.

Require TSA to assess its current staffing allocation model and share this model with both air carriers and airports.
Reallocate canine team assets to high volume airports and checkpoints.

Require TSA to establish a service level agreement and minimum staffing numbers with air carriers and airports.

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Congressman Jim Langevin (D-RI, 2nd), co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth has introduced the bipartisan All Kids Matter Act, which that would allow states to use federal foster care dollars for preventative services to improve the safety, permanency, and well-being of children who are at-risk of suffering abuse, neglect, or any other traumatic childhood experience.

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At least fifteen U.S. Senators and 10 U.S. Representatives joined together to introduce a resolution in the House & Senate establishing June 2nd as “National Gun Violence Awareness Day” and designating June as “National Gun Violence Awareness Month.” Every day in America, an average of 297 men, women and children are shot, 91 of them fatally.

Establishing a day to bring attention to the issue of gun violence honors the thousands of Americans who are victims of gun violence every year, including Hadiya Pendleton who was shot and killed in Chicago, Illinois on January 29, 2013. The resolution also urges citizens and community leaders to concentrate heightened attention on gun violence during June, when gun violence typically spikes at the start of the summer months, and to work together to make our communities safer from this violence.

I am supportive of keeping the 2nd Amendment alive. I believe if enough of the right people owned guns, there would be a lot less gun violence, and while I believe that victims of violent crimes should be heard, I don't believe taking guns out of the hands of law abiding people, or making it harder for them to own one, is the answer. I do, however, believe that gun safety education (as opposed to gun safety regulation) is.

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With millions of Americans struggling to access and afford basic mental health services, Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy, 3rd (D-MA, 4th) introduced a bill to increase the federal Medicaid reimbursement rate for mental and behavioral health care services. Dubbed the “Medicaid Bump,” Kennedy’s bill would enhance the federal match for new, state-based mental health spending.

Medicaid is currently the single largest payer of mental health services in the United States. However, stubbornly low reimbursement rates have impeded gains made under the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, making it difficult for providers to accept patients. The impact on access to care has been profound: Nearly half of all counties in the United states have no practicing psychologists, psychiatrists or social workers.

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Rep. Steve Knight (R-CA, 25th) introduced a bill Thursday that would expand opportunities for companies to contract with the federal government for energy production and improve the process for evaluating new energy projects.

H.R. 5349, the Energy Contracting Opportunities Act, would change an outdated rule for federal agencies that limits their ability to enter into long-term contracts with energy companies, bringing them in line with contracting options currently only available to the Department of Defense. This change would give smaller and newer energy companies, including those that work with renewable sources like solar and wind, more opportunities to compete for government contracts to reduce the government’s taxpayer-funded energy bill. This flexible approach has already been a huge success for the Defense Department.

H.R. 5349 would also provide clarity on an issue that has caused major delays in developing new energy projects by requiring a study on impacts that different energy sectors have on bird populations around the country. Not having this information has been a major roadblock for approving new projects. The side-by-side comparison would allow those deciding whether or not to approve or zone for projects to have accurate, up-to-date information on the effects of various energy projects, taking into account the significant industry-driven improvements recently made to energy technology.

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The Rural Health Care Connectivity Act, passed the House of Representatives last week. The bipartisan legislation was included as part of a larger bill, H.R. 2576, the TSCA Modernization Act. Specifically, Loebsack’s bill makes skilled nursing facilities eligible to receive funds through the Universal Service Fund’s Rural Healthcare Program. This is a $400 million program that provides discounts for telecommunications services so that rural healthcare providers pay comparable rates to their urban counterparts, and helps expand healthcare provider access to broadband services.

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Happy Memorial Day. On this day I would like to thank all of those who serve, who have served, and especially all of those who gave all they have to the cause of keeping America free!