The estimated EF-4 tornade had winds that were speculated to be 200MPH+ and cat a path of destruction about 2 miles wide. It made a direct line for the Plaza Towers Elementary School where 75 students and an unknown number of faculty were in attendance.

Thirty students were reported to have been rescued as the parents of the remaining students waited outside to hear about their own children.

Moore is a suburb of Oklahoma City, OK, the city that fell victim to the F-5 tornado in 1999.

Reports are surfacing that while the 4th through 6th graders are accounted for, many children and staff from the kindergarden through third grade are still missing.

Confirmed reports list 51 dead and more than 60 injured. City officials have warned that the death and injury tolls will likely increase.

An estimated 38,000 customers are without power in the Oklahoma City area.

A Moore resident said “I was driving home and I saw the funnel, cars were stopping.”

*this story is developing and will be updated as more information comes in*

Updates (all times ET):

9:05pm: Water treatment is offline due to loss of power at the Draper water treatment facility. Generators are being brought in and water service should be returned to non-damaged areas by about midnight tonight.

9:10pm: Officials report that, unlike some news reports said, they are still in rescue mode attempting to find survivors. Some news reports had reported that operations had turned to recovery.

9:49pm: Up to 24 children missing, unknown if they are alive or dead. Rescuers and search dogs are hard at work to find them.

9:51pm: Officials say that children may have drowned due to water flooding into the storm-ravaged school

10:38pm: 65 Patients in OU trauma hospital. 45 are children

11:06pm: Some speculating that this could be worse than May 1999 tornado

9:45am: Death toll revised from 51 to 21. Revision due to incorrect counts.

CBS video:

CNN Video of the Moore, OK tornado:

President Obama will visit a school, a dredging manufacturing plant and a worker re-training center on this trip.

Obama is continuing his “Middle Class Jobs & Opportunity Tour” which started last week in Austin, Texas.

Just this week the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced troubling statistics. First time jobless claims surged up to 360,000.

During his Texas tour stop, the President told attendees that America needed to become a better magnet for good jobs, government needed to help people earn the skills they need and that “we’ve got to make sure people’s hard work is rewarded so that they can make a decent living doing those jobs.”

During his first five years in the White House, President Obama has been criticized for a lack of action on the economy and jobs.

The President ignored and then disbanded his jobs council, has delayed the Keystone XL pipeline, targeted coal mining companies, dumped millions into failing green energy companies and dumped tons of money into ineffective stimulus programs like cash for clunkers all while getting Obamacare passed, pushing a failed attempt at a gun grab and hosting several star-studded parties.

In the last week, a series of government scandals involving the IRS, Department of State and Department of Justice have flooded the news.

Obama pivoted, then had a laser-like focus, then re-pivoted and is now pivoting again  to that which Americans have cared about most: jobs and the economy.

Sarah Hall Ingram spent three years, from 2009 to 2012, as the commissioner of the tax exempt office of the Internal Revenue service. Instead of being asked to resign, getting fired or perhaps indicted, Ms. Ingram has been made the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office.

According to the I.G. report, the tax-exempt unit started targeting conservative groups in 2010, shortly after Sarah Hall Ingram took charge of the office.

The news for the past two days has been about Joseph Grant being asked to tender his resignation because of the abuse of power displayed by the tax exempt unit. Grant had been the commissioner for a grand total of eight days when the scandal broke and is currently the most visible scapegoat.

During the height of the illegal and unfair treatment of conservative groups, Sarah Hall Ingram was in-charge and Mr. Grant served as deputy commissioner. Ms. Ingram will likely be called before Congress to testify and could be investigated by independent council.

Obama on Thursday dismissed the idea of appointing a special counsel to investigate the IRS scandal.

Now that Ms. Ingram is in-charge of enforcing Obamacare, serious questions are being raised about the IRS’ ability to do so fairly.

On Thursday, House Republicans passed a bill to repeal Obamacare in its entirety.

Another bill up for consideration removes the funding that the IRS would have received to enforce several provisions of the troubled health care law.

Sen John Cornyn (R-TX) said “after the events of last week, I cannot support giving the IRS any more responsibility or taxpayer dollars to implement a broken law.”

Obamacare has been losing popularity steadily since its inception and the scandal surrounding the IRS’ director of Obamacare will likely make more Americans leery of coming mandates.

IRS officials are set to testify at House hearings today.

 –Rep. Tom Price (R-GA)

While each of the many scandals the Obama administration has found itself mired in may seem trivial taken alone, when looked at as parts of the whole, they signify a government disrespectful of its people and undeserving of their trust.

Fast and Furious

Fast and furious was the Department of Justice’s failed gun tracking program that allowed thousands of guns to be sold into Mexico without proper tracing. The government said that it was a simple lack of oversight, but gun rights groups saw it as the administration pushing American guns into Mexico so they could later blame Mexican drug and gang violence on American gun owners and retailers.

Earlier this month the President gave a speech at the Anthropology Museum in Mexico where he said, “Most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States.”

Benghazi

On September 11th 2012, four Americans lost their lives in a terrorist attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya. For almost two weeks, the administration blamed the attack on anger over a video.

The original CIA determination had no reference to the video. The intelligence community’s first draft of talking points had no mention of the video in them. After twelve rounds of edits to the communication several points the CIA felt important were significantly changed or deleted.

References to Al Qaeda and related groups and warnings about a possible attack were deleted at the State Department’s request. An email from State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland contained objections to the paragraph:

“The Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al-Qa’ida in Benghazi and eastern Libya.  These noted that, since April, there have been at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British Ambassador’s convoy. We cannot rule out the individuals has previously surveilled the U.S. facilities, also contributing to the efficacy of the attacks.”

Her concern was that inclusion of this information “could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either?”

Several more State Department emails expressed that the early changes weren’t enough. Nuland’s fingerprints are all over the changes to the talking points showing direct administration involvement in scrubbing them for political purposes.

Just prior to the attack, the President’s re-election campaign had released a slogan. “GM is alive and al-Queda is on the run.”  The intelligence communication did not fit that narrative and Nulan seems to have been keenly aware. With the election only months away, terrorists could not have been shown to have had a victory on President Obama’s watch.

The fact that the President made several references to the video after the attack shows either willful dishonesty or a President being misled by his own administration.

Many, including the President, talk about the talking points as though they are insignificant. They are significant. They were intended as a brief form of communication to leaders in Congress. Misleading Congress should come with heavy penalties – if Congress were so inclined to perform its duty to balance the power of the executive.

Even Democrats see past the smoke and mirrors that Obama is putting up with Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland) writing a letter to Rep. Darrell Issa saying “If our committee is truly interested in improving the security of American diplomatic personnel overseas, members of our committee and the American public should hear first-hand from the individuals who have done the most exhaustive review of these attacks.”

Benghazi is not a partisan attack, it’s American’s seeking the truth from an untruthful government.

IRS Abuse of Power

In March of 2010, the IRS began targeting groups with “tea party”, “9/12″ and patriots related to them. Before long, the tax collection arm of the federal government added “government debt”, “constitution” and “criticize how the country is run” the the list. More than 100 Conservative groups were targeted in the initiative.

Who asked for these groups to be targeted? How far up the chain-of-command does this go? Questions still needing answers.

More disconcerting is the fact that the IRS will become the de-facto enforcer for the Obamacare mandate. An agency that makes major decisions based on political ideology will be given even more power as the mandates take hold.

AP Phone Records

The phone records attached to 20 separate phone lines used by AP reporters were seized by the Department of Justice.

DOJ policy requires notice beforehand and that the scope of the information gathering be kept narrow. Neither was done.

The records were allegedly seized in an effort to discover the source of leaked information about a possible airline bombing plot.

The government is setting a precedent of willingness to abridge the first amendment, freedom of the press, as long as it suits its purpose.

A simple request for the phone records should have been the first action before using the liberty-destroying Patriot Act to garner information from a press organization.

Fostering mistrust of the government

Each of these scandals on their own are small. But there is an over-arching theme: the government does not respect the rights of the people.

Misleading Congress, creating dangerous scenarios with Mexican gun runners, abuse of power by the IRS and spying on the Press are all indicative of a culture that feels the Constitution and its protections are a nuisance.

How many times will the American public be lied to and still be able to feel that their government can be trusted?

Colorado’s Secretary of state has approved language for petitions to recall Senate President John Morse and state Rep. Mike McLachian. Both democrats are from hotly contested districts and their anti-gun votes will likely cost them their seats.

Voters are also pursuing recalls for Sen Evie Hudak and state Rep. Rhonda Fields and considering filing a petition to recall governor John Hickenlooper.

Rep. Fields sponsored the very unpopular 15 round magazine limit legislation. She is notorious for her outright gun-grabbing stance on the second amendment. During the push for the anti-gun bills, Fields remarked, ”The objective is to get the guns out of the home.”

Sen. Hudak had an equally troubling public event during the democrat-pushed anti-gun effort. During a hearing on concealed carry on college campuses, Hudak told a rape victim that her attack would likely have been worse if she had tried to defend herself by carrying a concealed firearm. Then stating a now proven false statistic, Hudak argued with the rape victim “I just want to say that actually statistics are not on your side…the Colorado Coalition Against Gun Violence says that for every one woman who used a handgun to kill someone in self-defense, 83 were murdered by them.”

Of course, the way Hudak expressed the statistic, she makes it sound as though the victims own guns were turned on them. As several news agencies have reported, Hudak contorted 1998 FBI statistics to say something they actually didn’t say at all.

Colorado voters have come together to form the Basic Freedom Defense Fund to coordinate the recall effort. Headquartered in Grand Junction, CO, the group’s website says, “The Basic Freedom Defense Fund is a non-profit dedicated to holding our elected representatives here in the state of Colorado RESPONSIBLE and ACCOUNTABLE for the things they do in office, and to ensure the defense of our freedoms and civil rights.”

Colorado voters aren’t the only ones organizing. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been spending millions during the 2013 anti-gun effort and is likely to fund groups like “A Whole Lot of People for John Morse” which is hoping to defend Sen. Morse during the recall.

Last year, Governor Bobby Jindal pushed legislation through that would allow parents to use their own tax money to pay for schools they choose instead of the failing public schools the unions would rather funnel children into.

The court did not challenge the idea of allowing parents to choose the best schools for their children, it only challenged the method by which the legislature had chosen to fund those choices – vouchers.

The State constitution does not allow public funds to be used for private education. Louisiana has a founding document that limits the liberty of parents in the area of school choice. A firm strike against hard-working middle and low-income earners.

Louisiana has a history of corruption and government over-control. Now, the Pelican state has a supreme court that believes that unions know better than parents which schools are better for kids.

The voucher program allowed low and middle-income earning families to choose high-performing schools usually only available to the middle-upper class. It appears that that while the Supreme court has pointed out some errors on the part of the legislature, the rather thin vote that allowed the voucher program to pass shows that most Lousianans prefer union-run, poorly-performing public schools and forcing parents into the schools that the ruling elite see fit.

Hopefully, Lousiana voters will realize that if they want their children to get the best education available, they will push for school choice and reject the union oppression that exists today.

Gov. Jindal has stated that state budget funds will be used to keep the program going.

If Louisiana parent are so concerned, their votes will show it next year.

Amidst news that the Koch brothers are considering purchasing at least five major Tribune Company newspapers — including the Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune, Orlando Sentinel and Hartford Courant — the staff at these organizations are starting to fight back.

Here is a case in point. Last week, at an in-house awards ceremony for Los Angeles Times staff, columnist Steve Lopez asked everyone in attendance, “Raise your hand if you would quit if the paper was bought by the Koch brothers.” Fully half of the staff raised their hands.

What DailyKOS is unwilling to report in their naive release is that Tribune just emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December of 2012. Under the management of companies that care not about content, the papers are ripe for purchase from someone actually willing to run them. It would also seem that liberal-heavy content is not doing as well as say… the Wall Street Journal. Air America and Newsweek anyone?

The 50% of newspaper journalists that would leave those papers solely on ideology should absolutely do so. They are, by their own admission, biased – not a shock to the rest of the country.

I have seen the light. After all these years, I now agree that it’s fruitless to give the benefit of the doubt to people who are so obviously corrupt, so clearly malevolent, so bent on hurting innocent people for their own sick gain.

No more due process in the clear-cut case of insidious terrorism.

Those first two sentences are the first two in the article. No editing, ‘taking out of context’ or other egregious acts of non-journalism. They are exactly as Mr. Perry wrote them in the Aurora Sentinal.

So who exactly is he so angry with that he feels that their God-given, constitutionally-protected rights should be discarded? Why.. it’s the NRA:

No, no, no. Not the wannabe sick kid who blew up the Boston marathon or the freak that’s mailing ricin-laced letters to the president. I’m talking about the real terrorist threat here in America: the National Rifle Association.

Of course he wouldn’t wish this kind of punishment on someone like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, or the weirdo that mailed ricin to a member of Congress and a judge – no, not them. Dave wants the NRA to be stripped of due process.

Some may think the post was a joke, but dear old Dave’s own words tell it like it is when after those first two paragraphs he says, “I’m not laughing.” Well, neither is anyone else Dave.

The Boston Marathon bombings, the airplanes used in 9/11 and many black youths that are victims to crime have little to do with the NRA. The Marathon morons reportedly hollowed-out fireworks for their radical Islamist-fueled jihad. The 9-11 terrorist used airplanes. The horrific number of black youths killed by gang violence are almost entirely a cultural issue that years of liberal side-stepping has made worse. But Dave, you keep your head in the sand about our nation’s real problems. Keep toeing the line for the progressive left. Keep saying things that very few Americans actually agree with.

More troubling than Dave’s targeting of the NRA is his total lack of understanding of the U.S. Constitution. Due process cannot be foregone – unless you’re the president and see fit to do so.. apparently. Media outrage? Nope, just more like poor Dave piling on to the “you don’t deserve your rights” movement.

We have New York’s Bloomberg deciding what you can drink and eat. Several states are deciding what firearms your second amendment allows you to own and which one it does not. Day-by-day, the government is deciding that you are not self-sufficient. You, Mr. and Mrs. American, cannot take care of yourselves. You citizens need the government to tell you what rights you do or do not have!

Dave is just saying out loud what all those liberal Democrats are thinking. “They don’t think like us so let’s take away their rights and lock them up!” What’s that you say? Dave never said to lock up the NRA? Oh, but he did:

Send the guilty monsters directly to Guantanamo Bay for all eternity and let them rot in their own mental squalor.

It’s easy to believe that taking away some other law-abiding citizen’s rights is OK as long as it affords you some level of security. Unfortunately, it is also the slippery slope to serfdom.

Sure, you won’t lose all of your rights in a moment. It will be limits on this or limits on that. Slowly, but surely, you won’t be able to say much that the ruling class disagrees with.

Then come the rules about what you may not possess. Harmless at first, then more intrusive until finally you’re stripped of anything the D.C. elite see as an obstacle to their power and agenda.

This isn’t theory, it’s history brought forward. Learning from governments of the past to understand what those actions eventually bring about. Learning from all those citizens who at those times thought “surely that can’t happen here.”

Ignorance is the tool of the left. Whether Mr. Perry wrote this in a moment of rage, out of spite or because he has an agenda is impossible to guess. The results of such thoughts have been proven throughout time.

The bill, which will limit the manufacture or sale of 11+ round magazines,  was voted out of the committee by a narrow 3-2 vote, but is widely expected to pass the full House in a vote this Wednesday. Governor Jack Markell is also in full support of the measure.

Delaware citizens will still be allowed to own the banned magazines and use them in private settings such as ranges or at home.

Bans such as the one Delaware is considering do not only limit the magazines. The ban also prevents citizens from purchasing many guns that normally come with magazines holding 12 or more rounds. The bill will severely limit the availability of firearms for those wanting one for home defense, personal protection or competition.

Active and retired police officers will still have the ability to purchase the magazines and guns with higher capacities although many firearms manufacturers and retailers no longer sell items to government agencies that the state prevents their citizens from owning. The firearms companies share the common sentiment that if the citizens of a state have had their second amendment rights infringed, then the state agencies should live with the same restrictions.

Evan Westrup, a spokesman Governor Brown said that the bill “makes our communities safer by giving law enforcement the resources they need to get guns out of the hands of potentially dangerous individuals.”

The state has always had laws allowing them to take weapons from those who obtained them legally but have since committed a crime or been diagnosed with a psychological condition. This new legislation puts $24 million behind the law so that confiscations can happen faster.

The first of many gun restriction bills to head to the governor, this measure hires dozens of new agents specifically for the task of firearms confiscation.

The money does not come from the state’s general fund. Instead, the $24 million will be taken from a fund intended to strengthen California’s background check system.

The fees are known as DROS fees or “Dealer’s Record of Sale”. While other states collect no additional fees from dealer’s, California set up the DROS fee telling constituents that the fees would go to enhance the background check system. Instead, it appears that the fees will be used to confiscate firearms.

No good fee goes unpilfered.

The firearms background check system has been the focus of gun debate for the past few months. Supposedly, 90% of Americans wanted to see improved background checks. Now California believes that funds intended for such actions should be used to collect firearms that were legally bought instead.

Many ask where the money will come from to improve the background check system? How else will the large community of retail firearms-purchasing criminals be caught when they buy “assault rifles” at a gun store?

The good news is that California already has a registry of its gun owners which makes finding the current gun owners easier. The state has a database containing all those owning guns that the NRA and gun rights activists have long said would lead to confiscation.

Now, Governor Brown has proven that those registries are used to find gun owners for the purpose of taking their firearms. While the reasons may or may not make sense to different groups, the purpose of the database is now obvious.

What happens when the gun ownership bar is lowered next time? Will traffic tickets be enough? Spitting on the sidewalk? Shooting a double-barreled shotgun out the back door for home defense? Hey, don’t blame me, that was the Vice-President’s idea. Or what if the local law decides that your attitude on government is troubling? The Palm Beach Post reports that Palm Beach, Florida Sheriff Ric Bradshaw has been given the power to investigate people that disagree with their government.

The Florida state legislature gave the Sheriff $1 million dollars which he intends to use to fund an intervention unit.

The Sheriff says the new unit is important and that he wants ”

people to call us if the guy down the street says he hates the government.”

Sheriff Bradshaw replied to concerns saying “We know how to sift through frivolous complaints.”, but many are not convinced.

“We don’t want to take away people’s civil liberties just because people aren’t behaving the way we think they should be,” said Liz Downey of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

It appears that the California legislature is ignoring their constituents, the will of the people, public sentiment or all those other words Obama uses to tell us that Congress is doing it wrong.

When asked if this program should be a model for the nation, a Los Angeles Times poll had these results as of 9:00pm on Thursday (you can vote in it HERE):

DEARBORN, Mich., May 1, 2013 /PRNewswire/ –

• Ford Motor Company April U.S. sales up 18 percent compared to last year – best April sales since 2007, with cars up 21 percent, utilities up 16 percent and trucks up 16 percent
• Fusion and Escape both establish April sales records, with sales increases of 24 and 52 percent respectively
• F-Series, America’s best-selling pickup for 36 years, posts a 24 percent increase, with sales of 59,030 – best April sales results since 2006
• Lincoln overall sales up 21 percent; MKZ delivers its best monthly sales performance ever – with April sales passing the 4,000 vehicle mark for the first time in MKZ history

Ford’s April sales climbed 18 percent with gains across the portfolio – with cars up 21 percent, utilities up 16 percent, and trucks up 16 percent. Retail sales were up 27 percent.

“We are working harder than ever to keep pace with record demand for our all-new, fuel-efficient Fusion and Escape – with sales growth particularly strong on the coasts,” said Ken Czubay, Ford vice president, U.S. Marketing, Sales and Service. “F-Series pickups also continue to build on their momentum as the housing and construction industries rebound.”

Fusion continues its strong sales run with best-ever April sales results of 26,722 vehicles, a 24 percent increase over record year-ago April levels. The strongest retail sales increases for Fusion continue to come from the western and southeastern U.S. – with the sales in the West doubling in April and the Southeast up 70 percent.

Escape also had its strongest April sales since its launch 13 years ago, reporting a 52 percent increase with 25,826 vehicles sold.

Sales of America’s best-selling pickup, the Ford F-Series increased 24 percent, with 59,030 pickups sold. This represents F-Series best April sales results since 2006. It also is the 21^st straight monthly sales increase for F-Series – with sales up 19 percent year to date.

In April, Lincoln sales increased 21 percent. The new Lincoln MKZ established an all-time monthly sales record, with 4,012 vehicles sold for the month – breaking the 4,000 vehicle mark for the first time ever.

SOURCE: Ford Motor Company