Two armored U.S. Secret Service vehicles, including a limousine sometimes used by Vice President Biden, struck and killed a man hours before dawn Wednesday as he was crossing rain-slicked Suitland Parkway near the District-Maryland border, authorities said.
On October 17, Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, attended an Anti-Defamation League’s American Heritage Dinner. Holder called for the passage of The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act. A few days later, on October 22, the law was passed by Congress. Obama signed it into law on October 28. Holder said the impending passage of the legislation would be a “marvelous step of progress” and would result in what Rev. Ted Pike characterizes as stage two, “a massive national campaign to train lawyers to become hate crimes prosecutors.” Holder promised to begin using the act the moment it became law.
Some 100 new militia groups have formed since the election of President Barack Obama, says the Southern Poverty Law Center.
In a re-run of the phenomenon seen when President Bill Clinton took office, gun-rights advocates, libertarians, survivalists and others are forming militias as a symbol of their resistance to what they see as an administration that threatens to restrict their right to bear arms and expand government control over the lives of private citizens.
“The truth is that these groups are popping up like mushrooms after a spring rain,” said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a social-justice group that has been tracking the rise of militias over the past year.
Potok’s group put out a report earlier this year raising the alarm about the resurgence of armed militias. Since then, he told CNN, the group has counted about 100 new groups formed across the country.
A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for “doing his duty”.
Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday – after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year.
The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five year’s imprisonment for handing in the weapon.
In a statement read out in court, Mr Clarke said: “I didn’t think for one moment I would be arrested.
“I thought it was my duty to hand it in and get it off the streets.”