A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General says the deputy secretary of the DHS pushed through visas for foreigners investing in Las Vegas’ SLS Hotel and Casino project (formerly known as the Sahara Casino) at the request of Senator Harry Reid, whose son Rory Reid was, at the time, a partner in Nevada’s largest law firm, Lawson, Sawyer, and Collins.

The younger Reid represented Stockbridge/SBE Holdings as it readied to convert the old Sahara it purchased in 2007 into the new SLS Hotel and Casino. The timing of Rory’s legal representation in 2012 and into 2013 coincides with the dates of his father’s efforts to have DHS to speed up the EB-5 visas critical to SLS.

Over a dozen people stepped forward to say Harry Reid pressured then-U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Alejandro Mayorkas in January 2013 into pushing through visas to for Stockbridge/SBE Holdings Chinese investors even though the department advised against it.

Reid claimed it’s his job to press the federal government to speed up decisions on his constituents’ needs. However, an executive for one of the main companies involved in the hotel project donated more than $127,000 to Democratic political causes over the last three election cycles.

Reid also brushed aside reports saying he exerted political influence to win visas for investors who would have otherwise been turned down.

“The Homeland Security report came from a bunch of whiners at the Department of Homeland Security,” Reid told Nevada’s KNPR radio.

Created by Congress in 1990, the EB-5 program’s designed to attract investors willing to risk capital in ventures to create jobs in the U.S. Would-be investors who have at least $500,000 bankrolled in a new U.S. business can apply.

The USCIS is the agency within the DHS responsible for reviewing all EB-5 visa applications. The USCIS approves private companies, like American Dream Fund, hired by Stockbridge/SBE Holdings in 2007, to serve as Regional Centers, authorized to present EB-5 visa petition requests.

American Dream Fund, which focuses on Chinese EB-5 investors, is an investment associate of The Harris Group, a unit of the Marcus & Millichap Real Estate company. Marcus & Millichap CEO George Marcus has contributed to Reid’s campaigns and is a major contributor to Reid’s Senate Majority PAC.

Marcus contributed $5,000 to the Senate Majority PAC, according to FEC records on August 12, 2012. A month later, on September 11, 2012, Marcus contributed an additional $200,000.

Then in late 2013 and early January 2014, Marcus contributed an additional $1,250,000 to the Senate Majority PAC and by February 2014, with all the EB-5 visas approved, the $115 million of low-cost junior debt raised, construction on the SLS Hotel and Casino began. The hotel and casino opened its doors seven months later in August 2014.

On a related note, in August 2012, Reid arranged a meeting between then-Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez.  During that meeting, Menendez pleaded for leniency on behalf Dr. Salomon Melgen, whose accused of overbilling Medicare by nearly $9 million.

Interestingly, Reid arranged the meeting right after Melgen donated $300,000 to Reid’s Senate Majority PAC. By the end of 2012, Melgen’s donations to the Senate Majority PAC totaled $700,000.

Menendez has since been indicted on charges of accepting nearly a million dollars in gifts and campaign contributions from Melgen in exchange for political favors. The public interest group Cause of Action is now calling on the Department of Justice to launch a criminal investigation into Reid’s intervention in the DHS EB-5 visa program.

Oddly enough, last year Menendez interceded for an Ecuadorian woman banned from traveling to the U.S. because of visa fraud.

Estafania Isaias’ relatives gave $11,000 to Menendez’s campaign, more than $125,000 to the Obama Victory Fund and another $105,000 to the Democratic National Committee. Shortly afterwards, Menendez contacted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who recommended the DHS approve the visa waiver — which it did.

Senator Harry Reid’s former staffers and a current campaign operative received billions of dollars in federal ‘green energy’ stimulus money as a result of Reid’s advocacy. Reid’s top political strategist, Rebecca Lambe founded the Clean Energy Project (CEP) in 2008 and served as its executive director and is now an adviser to CEP.

Meanwhile, his former chief of staff Susan McCue served as CEP’s president and is a member of its board. Both McCue and Lambe also run Senate Majority PAC, a Super Pac with close ties to Reid that spent $67 million to elect Senate Democrats last year.

Reid also helped ‘green energy’ companies like Nevada’s Ormat Technologies secure $350 million in loan guarantees. This ties into another former Reid aide and CEP executive director, Lydia Ball.

While on Reid’s staff, Ball was in charge of advising Nevada companies on how to get financing through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. She helped organize Reid’s annual National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas, also cosponsored by CEP.

California biofuel company Fulcrum Bioenergy attended last year’s summit, where Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced a $105 million grant for the company. Fulcrum Bioenergy contributed to CEP in 2013 and 2014.

The Defense Department awarded it another $70 million two weeks later and Reid took credit.

“Senator Reid wrote Secretary Hagel in support of Fulcrum’s grant application earlier this year,” his office said.

The Center for American Progress (CAP) has also sponsored the summit since its creation in 2008. CAP’s founder and former chairman John Podesta was a CEP board member until September 2013 and the 2014 summit’s keynote speaker.

The Podesta Group, the lobbying firm founded by Podesta and his brother Tony, began representing Fulcrum in April 2014, five months before that year’s CEP summit. The $175 million in federal grants soon followed.

Ormat donated to CEP while the company’s chairman Yoram Bronicki donated to Reid. CEP listed Ormat as a donor in 2012, a year after Reid helped it get a $350 million loan guarantee and nearly $100 million in federal financing for Nevada Geothermal, which claims Ormat as a contractor.

Also working on behalf of Ormat is Cassidy and Associates, a lobbying firm and CEP donor who has former Reid staffer Lambe as a senior adviser. Meanwhile, Cassidy lobbyist Kai Anderson, Reid’s former deputy chief of staff, has continued to represent the company since April 2009.

Another former Reid aide working to secure financing was Paul Thomsen, then Ormat’s in-house lobbyist. He’s a former lobbyist for Lionel Sawyer & Collins where all four of Reid’s sons have worked along with CEP board member and former Reid staffer Brent Heberlee.

Two years ago, two former Ormat Technologies employees filed a lawsuit claiming the company lied to the Treasury Department to get more than $130 million in federal grants. The focus of the lawsuit is the federal help provided to Ormat through Treasury’s section 1603 which provided grants to owners of commercial solar property.

Former Ormat asset manager Tina Calilung and former business development administrator, Jamie Kell, say the company falsified documentation to get and keep the financing. Ormat obtained nearly $123 million for its California-based North Brawley geothermal plant even though it had already “began producing, selling, and delivering electricity in 2008, before the grant application window.”

Kell also says she had to withdraw a Freedom of Information Act request in November 2012 after Ormat threatened to take away her health insurance while undergoing breast cancer treatment. Her FOIA request dealt with the Puna geothermal plant in Hawaii, where Ormat’s accused of submitting a false application for funds.

Another CEP donor, SolarReserve is among the companies that took advantage of Reid’s aid in securing financing. Reid pushed the Department of Energy in 2010 to speed approval of a $737 million loan guarantee for the company’s Nevada manufacturing facility.

Nevada’s largest utility and a CEP donor, NV Energy got a $138 million stimulus package through Reid, who also helped extend solar power tax credits to another CEP donor, SolarCity. Recently, SolarCity opened a second operations center in Vegas.

Amonix, a solar company and CEP donor, received almost $6 million in tax credits federal backing after Reid intervened on its behalf of the company’s Las Vegas production plant in 2010. The company closed the plant in 2012.

Reid also helped McKinney James client Bombard Renewable Energy, which includes CEP donor, Valley Electric Association. McKinney James sits on the board of MGM Resorts International, a 2014 sponsor of Reid’s ‘green energy’ summit.

Let me see if I have this straight –

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, does business in Saudi Arabia and is working over time to strike a business deal with Iran, countries that execute people for being homosexual.  Mind you, Cook, a homosexual himself, literally wouldn’t be allowed to live in the countries listed above.

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon does business with China, where homosexuality is handled by so-called “conversion” shock treatment.  Other companies boycotting Indiana include Smallbox, Salesforce, and Angie’s List.

All these businesses have one thing in common — they work with businesses that have outlets in places like Saudi Arabia, where homosexuality is punishable by death.

Seattle is also boycotting Indiana despite the Trade Development Alliance of Greater Seattle holding a planned event April 22 celebrating doing business in Iran. That’s a country where homosexuals are routinely hanged publicly from cranes.

Meanwhile in San Francisco, with its myriad of Saudi holdings, including the Fairmont San Francisco Hotel, they are boycotting Indiana. Also to be noted is the fact that the San Francisco Global Trade Council routinely performs ‘missions to China’ and works with the “Mayor’s Office of International Trade and Commerce.”

And the state of Connecticut which already has its own ‘Religious Freedom Restoration Act,’ is boycotting Indiana, too. Then again so do 17 other states around the U.S. and Progressives have yet too call for their boycott as well.

Finally, Progressives used to be the one’s crying about the doomed world that nuclear energy and arms are creating for ‘our children.’ Yet, nary-a-word from them as the Obama Administration inks a deal with Iran to allow that regime to proliferate enriched weapons grade uranium for purposes of peace.

And to think — these hypocrites believe states passing laws protecting religious freedom are discriminatory. Someone ought to ask the man swinging by his neck in Iran what he thinks about all this boycotting.

As a kid in Klamath, California – many of my summer days were spent sneaking off to the river to go swimming, fishing and if I could find a boat unattended, I’d steal it and take a quick zip up and down the water way. I hadn’t thought about my juvenile delinquent activities in years, until I found some outboard motor advertisements from 1975.

The original Johnson Outboards were made by the Johnson Brothers Motor Company of Terre Haute, Indiana. The company was destroyed by a tornado in March 1913 and relocated to South Bend, Indiana and then Waukegan, Illinois.

Evinrude Outboard Motors was created by Ole Evinrude in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1907. Evinrude was born in Gjøvik, Norway on April 19, 1877; five years later, his family emigrated to the U.S. settling near Cambridge, Wisconsin.

Founded in 1939, Mercury is a division of Brunswick of Lake Forest, Illinois. The company began when engineer Carl Kiekhaefer purchased a small outboard motor company in Cedarburg, Wisconsin with the intention of making magnetic separators for the dairy industry.

First, I never knew of any other brands back in the mid-70’s and secondly, I can’t believe I used to do shit like that.

It’s been nearly 11-years since preschool teacher Kyla Annan was found dead in her home in Reno. Francisco Merino-Ojeda has been on open murder, sexual assault and burglary in the first degree, followed a three-month investigation.

Twenty-one at the time of the murder, he was arrested in Santa Ana, California after a DNA sample obtained from local police matched DNA found at Kyla home. Earlier this year, someone reached out through Secret Witness, claiming to have information on a possible suspect.

Since January, police have worked with the FBI and detectives in Southern California to collected Merino-Ojeda’s DNA. It matched the samples collected from the autopsy and the clothing and he was arrested on March 11.

After writing an article updating the case on February 6, 2015, I was contacted by Kyla’s father, Steve. He told me that some one had been arrest after confessing to the crime, but didn’t give me any further details. I spoke to the RPD, who refused to confirm Steve’s claim and I even forwarded a message to Secret Witness, encouraging them to update their website about Kyla, if indeed an arrest had been made.

Now, I understand.

It was Thursday, April 2 that I heard an arrest had been made in a 10-year-old cold case and that the man was sitting in the Washoe County Jail. I made the connection at that time, because as far as I know there was only one decade old unsolved murder in the area.

It was September 13, 2004, when Kyla reported to police that an intruder broke into her home while she and her boyfriend slept. The burglar and taken off his clothing, placed his hand over the mouth of Annan’s boyfriend and fled after the boyfriend chased him.

Ten-days later, Kyla was found dead in her home by her boyfriend. She was last seen three days prior working in her garden.

During the course of the investigation over 150 DNA samples were voluntarily collected from men in the area and from known associates of Kyla’s. None of the samples matched the FBI’s records.

I’m glad they caught the bastard responsible and I pray Kyla’s parents and other family members can now move on with their lives.

Now that Nevada’s Senator Harry Reid has announced his retirement, he’s giving interviews about his so-called career. Recently he admitted that he lied from the Senate floor about former presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Back in 2012, Reid accused Romney, without any evidence, of not paying any taxes. Reid even said that Romney’s father “must be so embarrassed about his son” Mitt because George Romney turned over 12-years of tax returns ahead of his 1968 presidential run.

Reid then told the Huff-Po that an unnamed, unverifiable Bain investor claimed that Romney was a “tax evader.”

“Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain. But obviously he can’t release those tax returns. How would it look? … You guys have said his wealth is $250 million. Not a chance in the world. It’s a lot more than that. I mean, you do pretty well if you don’t pay taxes for 10 years when you’re making millions and millions of dollars.”

Then from the Senate floor, he raved:

“So, the word’s out that he hasn’t paid any taxes for 10 years. Let him prove that he has paid taxes, because he hasn’t. We already know from one partial tax return that he gave us, he has money hidden in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and a Swiss banking account. Mitt Romney makes more money in a single day than the average middle-class family makes in two years or more.”

When reporters demanded Reid provide a source for this allegation, he refused to elaborate further, saying that “a number of people” told him Romney didn’t pay taxes and, “I don’t think the burden should be on me. The burden should be on him. He’s the one I’ve alleged has not paid any taxes. Why didn’t he release his tax returns?”

Reid defended his lies on CNN, responding, “Romney didn’t win, did he?”

He honestly doesn’t care that what he said wasn’t true as he has the law on his side. Even though Reid made slanderous statements about Romney he cannot be sued for them.

Article I, Section 6 of the U.S. Constitution states that members of Congress shall “be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place.” The only exceptions to this rule are for treason, felonies and “breach of the peace.”

The 75-year-old Reid’s admission feels like junior high school logic, therefore wouldn’t it be so adolescent if his pants really did catch fire?

Boston Police Officer John Moynihan, who was honored by President Obama in May 2014, pulled over a group of suspected gang members. He didn’t have his service weapon drawn, but Angelo West shot him in the face anyway.

West, in return was shot and killed by six other officers.

But of course, some people are fomenting trouble because West was a Black man. And apparently, the fact that he shot an officer in the face without provocation, doesn’t matter.

In fact, using #BlackLivesMatter, some people believe the other officers should have considered West’s skin color before retaliating.  Still others complained about how long West’s body lay in the street after the shooting.

Shortly following the shootings, the Boston chapter of Black Lives Matter held a “People of Color ONLY” meeting about West’s death. One activist, Joao DePina said he left the meeting after being confronted for pointing out how the discussion focused too much on the shooting and not on how to improve police and community relations.

Daunasia Yancey of Black Lives Matter Boston dismissed DePina’s complaint, claiming he was only in the meeting briefly. She added that the group has not yet formed a position on the shooting, but that one will be released in the days to come, along with any protest plans.

It doesn’t matter to them that West is a career criminal who tried to kill police officers during a 2001 shootout. He only survived the incident because officers refused to shoot the armed man as he tried to goad officers into doing so.

On the other hand, community leaders, including Black ministers and politicians praised Boston police for sharing the video of the shooting with them — the footage they say exonerates officers. Meanwhile they called for such cooperation to become routine in police-involved shootings.

Moynihan is recovering from what doctors consider to be a “successful” surgery to remove a bullet from his neck. He’s now in stable condition and expected to fully recover.

The 34-year-old former U.S. Army Ranger and Iraq war vet was honored by the White House as one of ‘America’s Top Cops’ for his role in saving the life of a transit officer during a gunfight with the Boston Marathon bombers in April 2013. He received the departments Medal of Honor for his actions.

It takes a very special person like Officer John Moynihan to be willing to risk so much for people who care so little.

Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), guarantees an individual right to conduct business without ‘substantially burdening their ability to exercise their religion.’ In other words, it allows a person to use the law as a defense in private litigation and sets a standard by which cases involving religious objections are to be judged.

This should be a non-event as “Religious Freedom,” is a cornerstone of this American nation. Furthermore, Indiana’s RFRA is based on a 1993 Federal Act, sponsored by Senator Ted Kennedy, and signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

The 1993 law was in response to the Supreme Court’s Employment Division v. Smith (1990), which determined the state could deny unemployment benefits to a person fired for violating a state law forbidding peyote use, even though the use of the drug was part of a religious ritual. The federal RFRA “prohibits substantial burdens on religious exercise unless the government can show a compelling interest in burdening religious liberty and does so through the least restrictive way possible.”

Progressives claim there are several differences in the Indiana law from the federal RFRA pointing to Section 9. Under that section, a “person” whose “exercise of religion has been substantially burdened, or is likely to be substantially burdened” can use the law as “a claim or defense…regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity is a party to the proceeding.”

That’s the rub – Progressives don’t want to go a lawsuit alone – they want the federal or state government to be forced to pick up the banner in their ‘social rights’ crusade. In the end, Indiana’s RFRA does not give businesses a “license to discriminate” against the LGBT community, but rather forces the state to work within a narrow legal limit giving businesses a defense against federal and state lawsuits.

It also prevents the state from doing what the New Mexico Supreme Court did to “Elaine Photography” when it ruled that state’s RFRA only applied in cases where the government interfered with religious freedom. The court rejected photographer Elaine Huguenin’s argument in which she stated her refusal to take pictures at a homosexual wedding did not discriminate against same-sex customers, but rather violated her religious beliefs.

RFRA protects the rights of everyone, regardless of their religious affiliation or lack thereof. In other words, not only can the Christian owner of a bakery refuse to make a wedding cake for a homosexual couple, but the Black owner of a print-shop can’t be forced to produce fliers for the Ku Klux Klan, the Jewish owner of a gift shop can rightly refuse to put swastikas on coffee mugs and the American Indian cannot be denied a hallucinate to be used in his religious rituals.

Sad, that no one seems to believe in letting people live their lives as each sees fit anymore.

“Nothing so strongly impels a man to regard the interest of his constituents, as the certainty of returning to the general mass of the people, from whence he was taken, where he must participate in their burdens.” George Mason is quoted as saying during the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 17, 1788.

And as you know by now, Nevada Senator Harry Reid has decided to call it quits and saying he’ll not seek reelection in 2016.

During the 32 years Reid’s served in Congress the debt of the federal government has grown $16,955,289,814,977.42. That equals an increase of about $145,131 for every household in the country.

When Reid was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1982, according to the ‘Monthly Statement of the Public Debt’ for December 1982, the total public debt of the federal government was $1.97 trillion. As of March 25 of this year, the latest day for which debt numbers are available, the federal debt was $18.152 trillion.

That means the federal debt’s increased jus’ under $17 trillion. That increase, when applied to the current $155,378 debt carried by every U.S. household, means that 93 percent of that debt came during Reid’s tenure.

Now, Reid, whose personal wealth has grown since he’s been in Congress, will walk away with a taxpayer-funded pension of nearly 70 percent of his senatorial base pay, which is jus’ over $200,000. So it begs the question: what burden does Reid share with the ‘general mass of the people?’

It must be nice work, if you can get it.

In a letter to James Madison, dated November 30, 1785, George Washington wrote, “We are either a United people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all matters of general concern act as a nation, which have national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending to it.”

What a difference 230-years make.

Recently, six-members of the Associated Students of University of California Irvine (ASUCI) voted to ban the American flag from the campus. And when other student leaders stood up against the ban, a group of university professors signed a letter showing their solidarity with students.

“U.S. nationalism often contributes to racism and xenophobia, and that the paraphernalia of nationalism is in fact often used to intimidate,” reads the letter.

Following the vote, ASUCI president Reza Zomorrodian said, “It’s an attack on American values. A lot of people want to come to the United States for a reason — it’s because of the freedoms we have.”

Thankfully, wisdom prevailed, and the resolution was overturned.

Now, a black student organization at the University of California at Berkeley is demanding the university rename a building on campus after Assata Shakur, a former Black Panther, convicted cop killer and the first woman named to the FBI’s Most-Wanted Terrorist List. But to members of the Black Student Union at Berkeley, she’s an “icon of resistance within oppressed communities (who) represents black resilience in the face of state-sanctioned violence.”

These demands should come as no surprise to anyone as a 1989 study by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching found 70 percent of the professors in the major liberal arts colleges and research universities considered themselves liberal.

The same study found most professors at major universities do little teaching. Their primary activity is research funded through agencies, like the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the USDA, and others.

Furthermore, many students are supported by government-subsidized loans and grants. The U.S. Department of Education says about a third of all students at public, four-year colleges and universities, and half the students at private colleges and universities, receive financial aid from the federal government.

Perhaps it’s time to federally defund colleges and universities and place the impetus of education at the feet of the local community that the institution serves.