By Rep. Diana DeGette

In light of the on-going gun debate, as a service to my constituents I have drafted a quick guide to gun safety. It explains how guns work as I understand it and offers some commonsense tips.

Judge Richard J. McMonagle
Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court
Court of Common Pleas
1200 Ontario St.
Cleveland, Ohio 44113-1678


COLUMBUS, Ohio

$860 million in overcharges are owed to some 270,000 Ohio businesses. Judge rules that state workers' compensation fund ran up $860 million in overcharges over a decade.

Ohio employers are collectively owed $860 million after being overcharged for nearly a decade by the state insurance fund for injured workers, a Cleveland judge ruled Wednesday.

Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Richard McMonagle's decision involving the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation affects about 270,000 mostly small-business owners, many unaware they are covered by the class action. His order rejected the state's arguments for paying a smaller amount.

The lawsuit, which began in 2007, said the bureau gave discounted premiums to companies that joined group insurance plans and charged companies not in the groups excessive rates to pay for the discounts.

McMonagle ruled in December in favor of business owners who didn't participate in the group rating program, agreeing they had been charged unfair premiums from July 2001 to June 2009.

Lawyers for the businesses argued companies paying group rates were not charged premiums that covered their losses, which forced the other companies to cover the difference. The bureau discounted its group plans as high as 90 percent.

A new fee structure took effect in July 2009, after McMonagle ordered the bureau to change its system for setting premiums for injury insurance. The maximum discount set by the bureau for group plans is 53 percent.

The amount employers are owed in overcharges has been a matter of dispute. Employers suing Ohio in 2007 originally asked for $1.3 billion, which included interest on the amount claimed, but McMonagle asked them to revise the figure downward after declining to award the interest.

During an evidentiary hearing last week, the state argued the employers did not suffer any harm that entitles them to restitution.

End of excerpt. Article continues:

http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0321/860M-overcharge-Ohio-employers-win-lawsuit

The White House is standing by Vice President Joseph R. Biden's decision to talk bluntly about his affinity for old-school shotguns -- despite a storm of criticism from the left that the pump-action pitch undermined the White House push for gun-control measures.

"The point the vice president was making yesterday is one that he's made before," Mr. Carney said. "And that is, that this administration, this president and this vice president ... firmly supports our Second Amendment rights, upheld by the Constitution, and that includes the right of homeowners, law-abiding Americans citizens, to have a firearm at their home to protect themselves in their home."

(Excerpt)

TUCKER, Ga. – It is no secret government schools have put President Obama on a pedestal unlike any other national leader.

Schools have been named after him long before his retirement or death, which is rather unprecedented. Students have been led in organized chants of his honored name. There are lesson plans comparing him to Abraham Lincoln.

But sometimes school employees take the rhetoric a bit too far and wind up in propaganda territory. The latest example comes from DeKalb County, Georgia.

For Black History Month, Livsey Elementary School created a cute display with the lines:

Rosa sat…so Martin could walk.

Martin walked…so Obama could run.

Obama ran…so our children could fly.


But Americans should NOT teach children than they need politicians of any stripe to be successful in life. In fact, they should know that President Obama’s is about to hand them – and successive generations – an astronomical national debt that they will have to deal with someday.

This deifying of Obama is unhealthy for our students because we are teaching them to look to an individual – or government in general – for life solutions. If anything, todays kids need to be reprogrammed to remember that they are the masters of their own destinies, and they themselves make the decisions that will ultimately determine the course of their lives.

As President John Adams said: we have a government of laws, and not of men. The unhealthy tendency to worship the people that temporarily fill government positions is a distraction for young people who should be focused on their own efforts to find their way in life.

Students need responsible parents and high quality teachers and educational options to be prepared for life, not pandering politicians or a nanny state that tells them what to eat for lunch, makes excuses for failing schools and defends subpar teachers.

The photo of the verse displayed at the school was reportedly taken Feb. 15th and posted on Planet.Infowars.com.

The school’s principal confirmed the photo was accurate and was taken inside his building.

RIVERSIDE - Three law enforcement helicopters flew above the Big Bear area tonight in search of the fired Los Angeles Police Department officer suspected in the revenge slayings of a college basketball coach and her finance in Irvine and the early morning ambush killing of a Riverside police officer.

The truck belonging to Christopher Jordan Dorner was found burning just off a forest road in the area late today, authorities said.

All the areas where someone could have walked away from the truck were being searched by ground, Cindy Bachman of the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department said at a 9 p.m. news conference.

"I'm not aware of any evidence found near the truck, nor am I aware of any explosives," Bachman said.

Bachman said she was not aware of any vehicle having been stolen since the burned out truck was discovered.

Deputies have gone to about half of the 400 vacation homes in the area and there were no signs of forced entry at any of them, Bachman said.

The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department provided two of the helicopters used in the search, while the other came from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

The IRS has begun implementing Obamacare; starting in 2014, "people who choose not to buy insurance and don't qualify for an exemption from the mandate will have to pay a fine of $95."

The $95 penalty will increase to $695 in 2016, and continue to grow thereafter at a "pre-determined" rate.

Households that do not earn enough to pay federal income tax are exempt from the penalty of the mandate, as are persons who are temporarily unemployed or transitioning from one job to another.

The current rules of the healthcare overhaul also say that if you have insurance "for one day of a month," it will count as having coverage for that entire month.

FBI agents have raided the West Palm Beach, Fla. eye clinic owned by Dr. Salomon Melgen, the wealthy donor to New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez who allegedly procured prostitutes for him -- some of them as young as 16 -- during trips to the Dominican Republic.

The Miami Herald reported that federal agents lined up vans outside the Melgen Eye Center late Tuesday night to haul away evidence in the case.

An agreement over a sweeping overhaul of immigration law reached by a bipartisan group of leading senators has quickly drawn its critics.

The outline of the plan covers border security, guest workers and employer verification, as well as a path to citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants already in this country.

The deal, expected to be announced later this afternoon, has a long way to go before the thorny details are worked out. But the development heralds the start of what could be the most significant effort in years toward overhauling the nation's inefficient patchwork of immigration laws.

It is already drawing critics who say it will add an incalculable financial toll on America.