Florida Sentinel Bulletin

WASHINGTON — In an election-year pitch to middle-class voters, President Barack Obama is denouncing a House Republican budget plan as a “Trojan horse,” warning that it represents “an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country” that would hurt the pocketbooks of working families.

Pres. Obama, in a speech to newspaper executives, is sharply criticizing a $3.5 trillion budget proposal pushed by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., which passed on a near-party-line vote last week and has been embraced by GOP presidential hopefuls. The plan has faced fierce resistance from Democrats, who say it would gut Medicare, slash taxes for the wealthy and lead to deep cuts to crucial programs such as aid to college students and highway and rail projects.

“It’s a Trojan horse. Disguised as deficit reduction plan, it’s really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country,” Pres. Obama said in excerpts of his speech released Tuesday. “It’s nothing but thinly veiled social Darwinism.”

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Monday issued a rare, direct challenge to the Supreme Court to uphold his historic health care overhaul, weighing in with a vigorous political appeal for judicial restraint.

He warned that overturning the law would hurt millions of Americans and amount to overreach by the “unelected” court.

Pres. Obama predicted that a majority of justices would uphold the law when the ruling is announced in June. But the president, himself a former law professor, seemed intent on swaying uncertain views in the meantime, both in the court of public opinion and in the minds of the justices about not overstepping the high court’s bounds.

Although dogged by allegations of racism, the U.S. Capitol Police force has taken a big step by adding two Black female captains to its ranks.

The U.S. Capitol Police have the primary function of protecting lawmakers who work on the Hill and to watch over the dozens of congressional buildings housed around the main Capitol building. As they moved up in rank, Yogananda Pittman and Monique Moore did not have the luxury of meeting other Black women equally as poised to make it to the levels of upper management. Still, neither woman seems bitter about their road to ascension.

BALTIMORE — The record-breaking Mega Millions jackpot climbed to $656 million on Monday, though no one holding one of the three winning tickets has come forward yet to claim a share of the prize, officials said.

Three tickets — one each in Kansas, Illinois and Maryland — will split the jackpot, which officials said Monday was higher than previously estimated. It is now at $656 million, after sales from the 44 state lotteries were totaled, up from the previously reported $640 million. That means each winner would receive roughly $218 million apiece before taxes.

In Maryland, a McDonald’s employee claimed to hold the winning ticket and planned to contact lottery officials Monday. But lottery spokeswoman Carole Everett said no one had come forward with the ticket sold at a 7-Eleven store in Milford Mill outside Baltimore.

WASHINGTON  — The costly Republican primary has been draining Mitt Romney’s wallet and giving President Barack Obama time to build an expansive campaign architecture with offices in 45 states and hundreds of employees.

Pres. Obama has spent more than $135 million — more than GOP challengers Romney and Rick Santorum combined — on his re-election apparatus, according to a report. That sets up his campaign to be larger and geographically more diverse than any of his opponents’ organizations.

TAMPA — University of South Florida nursing dean Dianne Morrison-Beedy arrived in 2010 with plans for the college to break into the top 25 in National Institutes of Health funding by 2015.

The nursing college hit its goal last year.

The USF nursing researchers made it to No. 25, among more than 600 nursing colleges, with nearly $2 million in NIH funding in the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30. It was No. 66 three years earlier.

Pictured: Shaunte Williams, rignt, a USF biological scientist, teaches lab technique to student Raquel Rosier

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The Florida Senate’s revised redistricting map is headed to the U. S. Department of Justice for preclearance under the federal Voting Rights Act.

State officials submitted the plan on Friday although the Florida Supreme Court has yet to consider it. Submitting it before the court review will give the Justice Department sufficient time to act before candidate qualifying begins in June.

Federal preclearance is required due to past racial discrimination in five Florida counties.

Maps for the House and Florida’s 27 congressional seats were submitted on March 13. That was after the Supreme Court approved the House map but rejected the Senate plan, forcing a do-over.

The Mega Millions winners — at least three of them — stayed out of sight. The losers, who could number 100 million, had plenty to say Saturday about losing out on the world’s largest-ever lottery jackpot and their dashed dreams of colossal wealth.

Journalists descended on convenience stores in Illinois and Maryland and Kansas lottery officials proudly proclaimed they sold winning tickets in the $640 million world record-breaking Mega Millions jackpot. The winners will earn $213 million before taxes. Three other ticket holders became millionaires.

MIAMI — Two people were fatally shot and 12 others were injured when gunmen opened fire on mourners outside a Miami funeral home.

A wake for 21-year-old Marvin Andre was just finishing and people had begun walking outside. A crowd of mostly young adults had gathered in front of the funeral home when a car drove by and opened fire.

People screamed and took cover. Several were left bleeding on the ground. Others ran back into the church, Jacques Leonet said.
“It was like a war zone,” Leonet said.

When officers arrived at the scene, one man was dead and 13 others were injured. A second man died after being taken to the hospital. Police said the injured include a 5-year-old girl.