A,M. Links: Obama Unveils Overdue Budget, Puerto Rico Reforms Pensions, South Koreans Not Rattled by the Nuke-y North

• President Obama, just a few
  months late, will
  unveil a budget including tax hikes (surprise!) and cuts to
  Medicare and Social Security.


• Add Maryland to the list of states taking advantage of public
  panic over Newtown to
  restrict self-defense rights. Meanwhile, a Texas non-profit is
  
  arming people who live in high-crime neighborhoods but can't afford
  guns.


• Reforming wildly underfunded public pensions may be beyond the
  ability or interest of most state lawmakers, but Puerto Rico's
  legislators
  voted to do just that. The plan raises the retirement age,
  increases worker contributions and reduces benefits. It also
  transitions over from a defined-benefit system.


• Scott Brown may run for office again, but
  this time from New Hampshire. Well, he wouldn't be the first
  Bay Stater to head north.


• As France's politicians stake their reputation on taxing the
  hell out of everything, the revelation that now-former Budget
  Minister Jerome Cahuzac evaded taxes
  threatens to bring down the Socialist government.


• A little more accustomed to crazy neighbors than most, South
  Koreans
  aren't letting the nuclear saber-rattling to the north bring them
  down.


• Ohio courts
  still routinely jail people who fail to pay fines and fees,
  even though that was long ago ruled illegal.

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North Carolina House Speaker Kills Bill To Create State Religion

The Republican speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives killed legislation on Thursday that aimed to establish an official state religion.

House Speaker Thom Tillis (R-Charlotte) announced Thursday afternoon that the bill would not be receiving a vote in the full House, effectively dropping the measure. Loretta Boniti, a reporter for News 14 Carolina, broke the news on Twitter, and it was confirmed in a breaking news alert posted on the home page of wral.com, a Raleigh-based television station. Tillis' decision followed several days of national media attention on the bill, which also said that the state government did not have to listen to federal court rulings and was exempt from the requirements of the First Amendment.

The bill, which was drafted by state Reps. Carl Ford (R-China Grove) and Harry Warren (R-Salisbury), was intended to address an issue in Rowan County, where the ACLU has filed a lawsuit against the county commission in an attempt to block commissioners from having a Christian prayer at the beginning of meetings.

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Here's How US Allies Could Shoot Down Missiles From North Korea

Things are heated on the Korean peninsula, and while there's plenty of talk from the North about launching a "cutting edge strike" on the United States, their missile capabilities are mostly limited to attacks against U.S. forces in South Korea or Japan.

But were they to actually launch missiles, America and its allies are far from defenseless.

South Korea and Japan currently have the Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept on Target system, better known as the PATRIOT. It's a highly mobile system that can be set up in under one hour.

First designed for an anti-aircraft role in the late 1970s, the Patriot was later modified to defend against ballistic missiles. With a radar that can pick up threats more than 60 miles away and armed with a high-explosive warhead, it's designed to launch missiles that detonate and produce shrapnel when it gets close to a threat, according to PBS.

The PATRIOT system was used extensively during the first Gulf War against Iraqi SCUD missiles, with varying degrees of success. In Operation Iraqi Freedom, however, they worked extremely well.

From a report of the Defense Science Board:

All nine enemy tactical ballistic missiles that threatened areas designated for Patriot defense were engaged. Eight of these engagements were observed by enough other sensors to conservatively declare them successes; the ninth engagement is judged to be a probable success. None of the attacking tactical ballistic missiles caused any damage or loss of life to the coalition forces.

Here's how it works:

The land-based PATRIOT system will soon be joined by U.S. ships en route to the area, the USS John McCain and the USS Decatur. Both are Aegis-class warships, meaning they're capable of intercepting and destroying ballistic missiles "above the atmosphere during the midcourse phase of a hostile ballistic missile's flight."

The holistic anti-North Korean missile system will also be bolstered soon by the deployment of another missile defense system to Guam, the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD).

SEE ALSO: Defense Secretary Calls North Korea Clear And Present Danger — US Set To Deploy Missile Defense To Guam >

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The Complete History Of False Threats From North Korea

North Korea is threatening Seoul again, this time over a jointly controlled factory.

The Democratic People's Republic also says it is restarting its nuclear reactor, five years after shutting it down.

But a survey of 50 years of North Korean bellicosity shows nothing major is likely to happen.

We went back and pulled all the major headlines created by North Korean bluster against the South since the end of the Korean War.

As you'll say, there are exactly zero violent outbreaks of any consequence.

In some ways we shouldn't be surprised by all the threats: the conflict never officially ended. Instead, an armistice was signed when the U.N. withdrew troops in 1953.

And there is a new dimension this time around i n the form of the North's brand-new leader, Kim Jong-un

But after five decades, it seems safe to say that we'll get through this one — and the next — in one piece.

Hostilities had ended by 1954. But just four years later it seemed like there'd barely been any progress.

And by '66, skirmishes had begun breaking out again.

Kim Il Sung, who ran the country during this time, can be credited with starting the trend of periodic bluster, which was mostly came from frustration over American forces' ongoing presence in the South. He ended up ruling until his death in 1994.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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Here Are The Theoretical Ranges Of North Korea's Missiles

With North Korea (DPRK) saying it has received final approval from Supreme leader Kim Jong-un for nuclear attack on the U.S., it's time to take another look at their missiles. 

This infographic from the National Post lists the types of rockets in the North Korean arsenals and their theoretically reliable ranges. The only thing missing is North Korea's most recent rocket, the recently launched Unha-2.

First of all, most analysts believe that North Korea is years from being able to strike the mainland U.S. with one of these, especially given proven capabilities and American defenses.

Second, North Korea is also believed to be years away from  being able to place a nuclear warhead on one of these.

The U.S. State Department initially responded to the North's recent strike plan by calling it more warmongering bluster, but in the last few days America has moved two guided-missile destroyers off of the Korean peninsula.

On the other hand, North Korean threats are very serious to staunch U.S. allies Japan and South Korea, which are easily within range of these weapons.

SEE ALSO: A Satellite Tour Of North Korea's Nuclear Facilities

SEE ALSO: ANALYST: US Military Expects North Korean Missile Launch

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North Korean Video Shows Soldiers Shooting Targets Of US Troops

The Hermit Kingdom has released new propaganda footage showing North Korean soldiers firing at targets fashioned after American soldiers, according to Sky News.

It is unclear when or exactly where the footage was shot, but Sky News reports the video first appeared on state TV. The video was uploaded Monday to Liveleak.

The footage comes mere days after North Korea said it had "entered a state of war" with South Korea. A senior U.S. official dismissed the provocation as just more bluster.

In the short clip, North Korean soldiers are seen shooting AK-47 rifles and pistols in a field, as a target with a cartoon-like representation of an American soldier is blasted away.

Anti-American sentiment runs high in the North, with state-run media often calling the U.S. "imperialist aggressors," and the South a "puppet regime."

The latest video is another in a long history of propaganda from the regime. On Mar. 24, the North released a four-minute clip showing paratroopers jumping in and overtaking the South's capital city of Seoul.

"The crack stormtroops will occupy Seoul and other cities and take 150,000 U.S. citizens as hostages," the narrator says in the video, as The Telegraph reported.

As is often the case with North Korean propaganda, the videos are mainly for domestic consumption, with Kim Jong-un demonstrating readiness for battle, inciting nationalism, and presenting himself as a forceful leader of his people.

Estimates of North Korean army personnel range from 700,000 to more than one million. The South has similar numbers, along with nearly 30,000 U.S. troops backing them up.

SEE ALSO: US: North Korean Warmongering Just More Bluster >

SEE ALSO: Kim Jong-un Has Already Hit His Biggest Target >

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North Korea Missile Plan Targets Washington, Los Angeles, Austin and Hawaii

The United States sent two
nuclear-capable B-2 bombers to the Korean Peninsula
yesterday in response to North Korea shutting down the military
hotline with South Korea on
Wednesday. Today, North Korea responded
by announcing it was preparing a missile strike plan against the
United States. A photo (at right)
released by the North Korean newspaper Rodang
 appears to identify Washington, DC, California, Austin, Texas
and Hawaii as targets. Leon Panetta, then the U.S. Secretary of
Defense, said
last April that America was “within an inch of war” with North
Korea and had to be careful about what it says and does that might
escalate the situation. Tensions have been rising since North
Korea’s latest round of missile tests began
last December. Earlier this month the totalitarian regime
declared the Korean War armistice signed nearly sixty years ago

null and void, something it had most recently done in 2009, and
six times since 1994.

The White House, for its part, responded today by saying the
U.S.
would not be intimidated and can defend itself and its allies.
However, as Ron Paul noted
earlier this week, some U.S. actions, like the public military
exercises and the push at the UN for new sanctions are helping
exacerbate the situation. North Korea has just one real ally on the
planet, China, and even that is barely so. Its reactions to tension
over the last few months have been to tell North Korea, or North
Korea and South Korea, as the case may be, to
simmer down. Russia’s foreign minister, meanwhile, warned today
of a “vicious circle” that could
spiral out of control. That’s highly unlikely. Instead, North
Korea’s saber-rattling, and the Western response to it, fulfills
the need Kim Jong Un has for attention and for an external enemy to
use as a scapegoat for the self-inflicted decades-long tragedy that
is North Korean society.

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Kim Jong-Un Has Already Hit His Biggest Target

No one in Austin, Texas seems to be worried about being targeted in the US Mainland Strike Plan that was pictured in the background of a recent Kim Jong-un photo op.

After all, it has been well-established that North Korean [DPRK] missiles can't make it to middle America — and we've learned over the years to ignore the crazy threats from the hermit kingdom.

But Kim's photo op may have been a hit with its real target: his own people.

Most DPRK experts seem to have come to this conclusion, including John Swenson-Wright, senior lecturer in East Asian International Relations at the University of Cambridge, in an interview with James Pearson of NK News.

“It seems reasonable to suppose that the target map is designed for home consumption and to create an impression of war-readiness for DPRK-citizens that is part of a wider policy of strengthening national resolve," says Swenson-Wright.

Consider also how the images were released in "widely distributed" and publicly displayed domestic workers newspapers.

Kim "needs to show he has the guts. The best way to do that is to use the military might that he commands," Lee Yoon-gyu, a North Korea expert at Korea National Defense University in Seoul told the BBC. "This paves the way for greater praise for him if North Korea makes a provocation later and claims victory."

Lee continued by saying that eventually Kim will have to perform a more provocative action in order to "make good on his threat" and retain credibility, so a tactical strike — a "skirmish" — is still a possibility.

Though all threats of preemptive nuclear strikes should be taken seriously, analysts say it's unlikely because it would effectively mean "suicide."

And lest there be any doubt that this was a photo op, the AP analyzed the photo and concluded that it was likely doctored.

Certainly this doctoring isn't for America's benefit, because the idea of North Korea reaching middle America (#whyaustin) with a missile is laughable.

“All the available technical evidence suggests that the North’s claims to be able to hit (let alone target precisely) geographical sites in the United States are highly implausible,” said Swenson-Wright.

The BBC backed up this assertion more than three months ago when researchers released an analysis of North Korea's most powerful missile, the Unha-3:

[Experts] acknowledge that there's no evidence that the North has the guidance systems or re-entry capability needed to mount an actual strike ... many more rocket and nuclear tests will be needed before North Korea can make a warhead small enough to fit its rockets and claim a credible nuclear delivery system.

While the West isn't scared, however, it's likely that the people of North Korea have no idea about doctored images or true missile capabilities.

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