Mediaboss Marketing

The top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee wants the nation's top intelligence officials to turn over documents that describe their conversations with President Trump on Russia's meddling in the 2016 election.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the committee's ranking member, sent separate letters to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers requesting documents, recordings, memos, notes and communications related to their conversations with the president or other White House staff about the investigations into Russia's role in the election.

The Maryland Democrat's requests follow a Washington Post report from earlier this month that said Trump asked Rogers and Coats to deny any existence of collusion between Trump's campaign associates and Russia.

The president asked the two top intelligence officials to help him push back against the FBI's investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 election, according to the Washington Post.

Both Coats and Rogers refused Trump's requests.

"The report ... stated that the president urged both of you 'to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion durign the 2016 election,' but that you refused these requests, which you 'both deemed to be inappropriate,'" Cummings wrote.

Previous reports suggest Rogers and his staff may have memorialized his conversations with the president.

A senior official at the National Security Agency reportedly detailed Rogers' conversation with Trump about the Russia investigation in an internal memo.

Additionally, Coats said during congressional testimony earlier this month he would provide information about his conversation with Trump to a congressional "investigatory committee."

Here is the original post:
Elijah Cummings demands DNI, NSA leaders turn over documents ... - Washington Examiner

TechCrunch

Google ends support for its Nik Collection photo editing software TechCrunch Google rightly took the plaudits when it made its Nik Collection photo editing software available for free last year removing the product's $149 price tag, which was once as high as $500 but unfortunately it looks like that move was a prelude to ... Google Abandons Its Nik Collection of Popular Photo Editing SoftwarePetaPixel (blog) Google Abandons Its Free Photo Editing ToolsMakeUseOf Google Is Ending Support For The Nik Collection Photo ToolsAndroid Headlines all 17 news articles »

Read more here:
Google ends support for its Nik Collection photo editing software - TechCrunch

Getting away with murder may soon be easier in Florida.

Prosecutors certainly hope it wont be.

Victims family members are pleading with Gov. Rick Scott not to let it happen.

But unless Scott does something he hasnt done much before defy the National Rifle Association the governor will soon approve changes to the states stand your ground law that will make it harder for prosecutors to convict killers.

So, if your wife has her skull bashed in if your son is shot in the back if your mother is strangled their killers will now have a better chance of getting off.

All they will have to do is claim self-defense.

It wont matter whether their claim is bogus. It wont matter if the killer is a gang-banger, a spurned lover or an angry neighbor.

As long as the killers claim they were standing their ground, they will be granted something no other state in America gives them a pre-trial hearing where the courts are predisposed to dismiss the charges.

How? Well, instead of a defendant having the burden of proof in explaining why the killing (or assault) was justified, under this new law, the state will have to explain why it wasnt. Its a standard never before demanded in pre-trial hearings.

The state essentially has to convict killers twice.

Critics have dubbed it a gang members protection act. But its not just gang members who could benefit.

Remember the case out of Jacksonville where a man, angry about loud music, fired 10 times at an SUV full of teenagers and then later claimed he was firing in self-defense?

Well, had this law been in place then, it mightve been good news for him.

Thats what makes the mother of the unarmed boy killed by that man so mad. This law would be a gross miscarriage of justice for families like mine, Lucy McBath wrote in an op-ed earlier this year, adding that the change would promote violence, vigilantism and a general shoot first, ask questions later culture.

McBath and Florida prosecutors want Scott to veto the bill. That seems highly unlikely.

The NRA claims the bill is needed to protect those who act in self-defense. What the NRA has not done, however, is provide evidence that self-defenders are routinely being wrongly convicted in this state. Its a non-solution in search of a problem.

Instead, the campaign to pass this law appears to be just another issue for the NRA to rally members and donations in the face of a nonexistent threat. Yet anyone who questions the law is branded anti-gun.

But that simple-minded tactic falls apart once you realize that this bills No. 1 critic is Seminole Countys gun-toting, conservative, NRA-card-carrying state attorney, Phil Archer.

Archer isnt against guns. Hes against murder. And assault. And bad guys getting off. And putting victims families through two trials. And wasting taxpayer money. And giving criminals a reason to claim self-defense, even when its completely bogus.

So he repeatedly traveled to Tallahassee to explain the faults of this bill stressing that theres a reason no other state in America gives accused killers and batterers such an advantage.

But Archer was ignored by every single legislator from his home county. Seminole County Republican Reps. Jason Brodeur, Bob Cortes and Scott Plakon and Sen. David Simmons all voted to pass the bill in a largely party-line split.

To be honest, Im not convinced all of Floridas legislators really understood what they were doing. Ive seen legislators pass NRA bills sometimes without asking questions, sometimes over their own whispered objections simply because they lack the fortitude Archer displayed in challenging the NRA.

They may not realize their mistake until down the road after court costs skyrocket, after different judges offer conflicting interpretations of the law or maybe after someone who kills one their friends gets off on a technicality.

Sometimes politicians just dont contemplate the real-world implications of the laws they pass.

Last week, though, one of them got a pretty good wake-up call.

It happened after a candidate for Congress in Montana body-slammed a reporter. Some politicians, including Panhandle freshman Congressman Matt Gaetz, began joking about other journalists who deserved a good body slam.

It was all fun-and-games until a reporter reminded Gaetz via Twitter that, under the stand your ground law he supported as a legislator a law that says those attacked have no duty to retreat that reporter would be justified in responding to a body-slamming by shooting the congressman.

Gaetzs response: Good point.

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

See more here:
With 'stand your ground' change, getting away with murder in Florida could soon be easier - Orlando Sentinel

We are over 100 days into the Trump administration, and there have been record numbers of gun sales as citizens are empowered by new leadership to embrace their Second Amendment rights. In April alone, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), the system gun retailers use to verify if a potential buyer can legally buy a gun, ran a whopping 2,045,564 background checks, showing there is renewed support for a strong Second Amendment after 8 years of anti-gun policies. And at the U.S. Concealed Carry Association (USCCA) our membership numbers continue to rise because the right to self-defense is one of our most fundamental beliefs as Americans.

In December 2015, a Gallup poll showed that 16% of Americans put terrorism as the number one issue facing our country. Sure enough, homeland security was also one of the biggest issues at the forefront of the 2016 election. Americans are worried about protecting themselves and their families, and have decided to take full advantage of their Second Amendment rights.

Under the past administration, President Obamas solution to violence and terrorism in this country was to legislate policies to keep people from legally obtaining guns. Now, under an administration thats pro-Second Amendment, gun owners can finally stop feeling criminalized for wanting to defend themselves.

An NBC/Washington Post poll also from December 2015 shows more people believe that the best way to stop terrorism is to allow citizens to arm themselves, instead of stricter gun control laws. A majority of people surveyed were also against an assault weapons ban, showing that the liberal claims of the majority of the country is against assault weapons, are false. In the same poll, only 22% of respondents were confident in the governments ability to prevent a terrorist attack an unsettlingly low number. All of these numbers from a year and a half ago, when our country was so close to an election, all explain the recent uptick in gun sales.

Americans watch the news, and are aware of what is going on around the world. We see it almost daily. Terrorist attacks in Europe, in places that seemed perfectly safe until recently, and even acts of domestic terrorism here in the United States have citizens concerned about their safety. Not to mention the instances of everyday crimes, which interestingly enough, is usually higher in places that have stricter gun laws. Legal access to firearms make citizens and their communities safer, and a country of armed, responsible citizens is a deterrent to criminals everywhere.

Lone-wolf terrorist attacks are on the rise, and the police cant always get there fast enough to stop the attacker before they hurt or kill people. Many attackers are known to the FBI and law enforcement, but there is little the government can do to intervene if the attacker keeps a low enough profile. It is up to responsibly armed citizens to be the first line of defense when these situations arise. Whether they are protecting just themselves, their family, or a classroom full of schoolchildren, people can see a clear need to arm themselves and know how to respond in a life threatening situation.

Back when the framers of the Constitution spelled out our freedoms in writing, the gun lobby did not exist. They were under no pressure from any interest groups regarding guns, and with pure intentions, wrote that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. With a leader in the White House that embraces and respects the Second Amendment, the tide is quickly turning toward a society that embraces responsible gun ownership, and does not condemn people for want to protect themselves.

Tim Schmidt is the president and founder of the U.S. Concealed Carry Association, and may be contacted at [emailprotected].

Originally posted here:
More Americans Are Embracing Their Second Amendment Rights - The Daily Caller

One day in October 2010, a man by the name of Angel Mendez was at his home, asleep on a futon next to his pregnant girlfriend. Hed built the home himself, and it almost redefined the word modest. It was little more than a one-room shack in the back yard of another persons residence, with a blanket for a door. He awoke from his nap to see a person pulling back the blanket. He picked up his BB gun, and heard someone shout gun! before 15 rounds came flying at him. He was grievously injured, ultimately losing a leg. His unarmed girlfriend was also wounded.

It turns out the person who shot at Mendez was a police officer. Los Angeles County sheriffs deputies Christopher Conley and Jennifer Peterson were looking for a parolee who was believed to be armed and dangerous. They did not have a warrant to search Mendezs home, and they did not announce their presence or identity before accosting him. They entered, saw his BB gun, and started firing.

Lest you think this is a unique incident, in March I wrote about the terrible case of Andrew Scott. Like Mendez, Scott was an innocent man at home with his girlfriend when the police came. Like Mendez, he was mistaken by police for the armed and dangerous man they sought. They pounded on his door, but they didnt have a warrant, and they didnt announce themselves. Like any reasonable person, he was alarmed at the late-night disturbance and had no reason to expect the police were its source. So he grabbed his gun. When he opened his door, the police shot him dead in two seconds.

Neither Mendez nor Scott did anything wrong. They were both absolutely within their constitutional rights to pick up a weapon in response to the unidentified persons attempting to enter their homes. Yet Mendez, and Scotts heirs, have so far lost in court, unable to collect any meaningful compensation from the police officers who shot them precisely because they exercised those rights.

Scotts estate lost at the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which held that the doctrine of qualified immunity protected the officers from having to pay any compensation to the innocent victims of their mistaken and wrongful use of force. Mendez lost yesterday in the Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously against a quirky Ninth Circuit use-of-force rule that allowed excessive-force claims where an officer intentionally or recklessly provokes a violent confrontation, if the provocation is an independent Fourth Amendment violation. In other words, if the officers violated Mendezs Fourth Amendment rights by unlawfully entering his home, they could be held liable for shooting Mendez even if the shooting itself might otherwise have been justified under existing law.

The Supreme Court found that the Ninth Circuits rule violated court precedent requiring lower courts to instead apply a totality of the circumstances approach to such cases, under which the reasonableness of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight. The Supreme Court then remanded the case back to the lower courts, where the deck is already stacked against Mendez. The court of appeals, after all, already ruled that the officers had qualified immunity from Mendezs claim, and the trial court determined that Mendezs decision to pick up the BB gun was a superseding cause that limited the damages he could collect.

Its time for a different approach. Its time for Fourth Amendment jurisprudence to explicitly recognize and accommodate the Second Amendment. If the Second Amendment means anything at all, it means that I have a right to defend myself in my own home, where as Justice Scalia noted in District of Columbia v. Heller the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute. Moreover, the Second Amendment exists in large part to protect the private citizen from state tyranny. It is odd indeed, then, that current law largely grants officers of the state the right to kill me in my own home even if I do nothing wrong. Indeed, the very act of exercising my Second Amendment rights picking up a gun makes it less likely that I will prevail in court.

Theres an old saying that a person would rather be judged by twelve than carried by six. In times of peril, the thinking goes, its better to risk a jury than to risk your life. But under modern jurisprudence, when the police barge in youre likely to carried by six and then judged wanting by one: Youll die in the face of overwhelming firepower, and your estates case will be tossed right out of court by a judge.

This presents the homeowner especially if he lives in a high-crime area where the need for a gun is most dire with an impossible situation. In the event of a home intrusion, he has to identify the intruder before he picks up his gun or risk being shot dead instantaneously. If the cops make a good-faith mistake, the burden is on the homeowner. If the cops act improperly, as they did in both Scott and Mendez, the burden is still on the homeowner. Heads, they win; tails you lose.

What is to be done about this? Civil-rights jurisprudence must recognize the central legal truths of Heller and empower the original meaning of the Constitution. Police use of force against an armed homeowner should be evaluated on Second Amendment grounds, not merely as an unreasonable search or seizure. Agents of the state should be held liable for violations of Second Amendment rights when they kill or injure someone solely because he or she exercised those rights. Shooting an innocent man in his own home because he grabs a gun when an unidentified person pounds on his door or barges through it isnt just an unreasonable search or seizure. Its a direct violation of his clearly established right to keep and bear arms.

Its not too much to ask police officers to obtain warrants and to knock and announce their presence in all but the most exigent circumstances. In both Scott and Mendez, there was no good reason for police not to identify themselves. Yet in both cases, a residents reasonable response to police failures undermined his efforts to hold them accountable for those failures in court. That is unacceptable. When a person enters my house unannounced, I should have the right to hold a gun in my hand. To argue otherwise is to eviscerate the Second Amendment.

READ MORE: A Federal Appeals Court Goes to War against the Second Amendment What Justice Gorsuch Might Mean for the Second Amendment Why Would Anyone Want a Firearm?

David French is a senior writer for National Review, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, and an attorney.

Read more:
A Sad Supreme Court Case Highlights the Need for Smarter Second Amendment Jurisprudence - National Review