From Daily Caller:

The House voted 241-175 — largely along party lines — to pass legislation that would speed up the approval process for the Keystone XL pipeline, despite threats of a veto by President Barack Obama.

The bill, sponsored by Nebraska Republican Rep. Lee Terry, would not require the company building the Keystone XL pipeline, TransCanada, to receive a cross-border permit from the White House in order to complete the northern section of the pipeline that crosses the U.S.-Canadian border.

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From LA Times:

Two newly elected members of the Los Angeles City Council are veteran Sacramento lawmakers whose campaigns got large boosts from special interest contributions.

Former state Assemblyman Gil Cedillo and state Sen. Curren Price (D-Los Angeles) won election Tuesday, beating candidates with more local experience because of their jobs as City Council aides.

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Photo courtesy of channone, flickr

From Sac Bee:

Gov. Jerry Brown, whose public remarks occasionally include a phrase or two in Latin, explained Wednesday two reasons he liked learning it.

“It’s obscure and makes you smarter than everybody,” he told about 1,000 people at aCalifornia Chamber of Commerce breakfast.

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Photo courtesy of DonkeyHotey, flickrjerry

From L.A. Times:

Democrats took another seat in the state Assembly this week, but a conservative Republican won a Central Valley state Senate district in an upset victory.

The San Diego-area Assembly seat was a sure bet for Democrats — both candidates were from the majority party.

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Photo courtesy Franco Folini, flickr

From Washington Post:

As soon as White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler heard about an upcoming inspector general’s report on the Internal Revenue Service, she knew she had a problem.

The notice Ruemmler saw on April 24 gave her a thumbnail sketch of a disturbing finding: that the IRS had improperly targeted tea party and other conservative groups. She shared the news with White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and other senior White House aides, who all recognized the danger of the findings.

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From Sac Bee:

Federal judges should be on notice: The U.S. Justice Department seems fully prepared to stretch the truth – or worse, spread falsehoods – to obtain search warrants. That’s what it did in labeling a journalist as an espionage “co-conspirator” for simply doing what reporters have always done – attempting to solicit information from government employees.

As has now been revealed by the Washington Post, the FBI obtained a search warrant in 2009 allowing it to track the emails and phone records of James Rosen, a Fox News reporter. Rosen was working on a story about how North Koreawas likely to react to U.N. sanctions. Rosen reportedly received information from Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a State Department adviser who had received a top-secret CIA memo predicting that the North Koreans might conduct a nuclear missile test in response to U.N. sanctions.

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From Contra Costa Times:

The Internal Revenue Service official at the center of the storm over the agency’s targeting of conservative groups told Congress on Wednesday that she had done nothing wrong in the episode, and then invoked her constitutional right to refuse to answer lawmakers’ questions.

In one of the most electric moments since the IRS controversy erupted nearly two weeks ago, Lois Lerner defended herself during a brief appearance before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The committee is investigating the agency’s improper targeting of tea party and other conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, and Lerner oversees the IRS office that processes applications for that status.

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From American Thinker:

How ought Republicans to respond to the growing list of indefensible abuses of power by Barack Obama?  Consider what he has done.  Obama has created the virtual equivalent of an “enemies list” and used the federal government to persecute these opponents of his plans.  Obama has repeatedly and transparently lied to the American people about the misdeeds of his lackeys and his knowledge of those misdeeds.  Obama has hidden behind a gaggle of subordinates whose responses to questions sound like the “…to the best of my knowledge at this point in time…” mantra which Richard Nixon’s lieutenants recited when called before the House Judiciary Committee in 1974.

Barack Obama committed precisely the sort of “high crimes and misdemeanors” which the Founding Fathers intended to be cause for impeachment.  Republicans, who control the House of Representatives, should begin the process of investigating whether Obama should be impeached.

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From SJ Mercury:

The San Jose City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to raise the city’s tax on marijuana collectives to 10 percent starting in July.

Raising the city’s marijuana tax was among Mayor Chuck Reed’s budget recommendations for the coming year. San Jose voters in 2010 approved a tax on medical marijuana providers of up to 10 percent of gross receipts. The council later that year set the rate at 7 percent, with collection beginning in March 2011.

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From Roll Call:

Even as emergency personnel continued to search through the debris of Monday’s tornado in Oklahoma, talk on Capitol Hill had turned to the question of paying for the recovery.

Rep. Peter T. King, a Republican from Long Island, told CQ Roll Call he was prepared to go to bat for the victims in Moore, Okla., as he did when Superstorm Sandy devastated the Northeast last year.

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Photo courtesy of 401(K) 2013, Flickr