Chad’s Morning Brief: Marco Rubio vs. Rand Paul, Police On Alert Across America

Here is your Morning Brief for December 22, 2014.

Rubio vs. Paul

According to FOX News, Senator Marco Rubio isn't too happy with Senator Rand Paul over Paul's stance on Cuba. In fact, Rubio has gone so far as to lump President Obama and Rand Paul together on foreign policy.

Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, argued that the Castro regime intends to reap the economic benefits of the U.S. easing commercial and travel restrictions with no intentions of improving human rights conditions and moving toward democracy.

“It will grow [Cuba’s] economy, but it won’t grow political freedom,” Rubio said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Rubio and Paul, a Kentucky Republican and another likely 2016 presidential contender, have been involved in a Twitter exchange since Obama announced the Cuba plan Wednesday.

Paul recently said Rubio, by opposing the Cuba plan, was “acting like an isolationist,” a criticism often directed at Paul.

Rubio said Sunday that Paul's support for the Cuba plan makes him “the chief cheerleader for Obama’s foreign policy.”

“I’m going to continue to oppose the … Obama-Paul foreign policy,” he told ABC.

In response, Senator Paul's adviser, Doug Stafford, said Rubio's foreign policy approach has made the world less safe.

"With all due respect, Senator Marco Rubio was captain of the GOP cheerleading team for Obama's arming of Syrian rebels, bombing Libya resulting in a jihadist wonderland, and illegally giving foreign aid to Egypt's military government," Stafford wrote in an email to FoxNews.com on Sunday night. "The Rubio-Obama foreign policy has made the Middle East and North Africa less safe."

This is just a preview of what we will see in 2016.

Police on Alert

After Saturday's deadly police shooting in New York, police agencies across America are now on alert according to FOX.

Wear bulletproof vests. Avoid posting inflammatory statements on social media. Don't make arrests unless you have to. Don't patrol alone.

Those are some of the warnings police departments and unions around the country are giving to the rank-and-file after two NYPD officers were ambushed and shot in their patrol car in broad daylight Saturday afternoon.

The murders of Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu in Brooklyn heightened fears about the safety of law enforcement officials nationwide, though there is no evidence any threats are imminent. The gunman, 28-year-old Ismaaiyl Brinsley, had vowed in an Instagram post to put "wings on pigs" as retaliation for the slayings of black men at the hands of white police.

Brinsley was black; the slain New York Police Department officers were Hispanic and Asian.

Investigators are trying to determine if Brinsley had taken part in any protests over the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, whose names he invoked in his online threat, or simply latched onto the cause for the final act in a violent rampage. Protests erupted in recent weeks after grand juries declined to charge officers involved in Garner's death following a New York officer's apparent chokehold and Brown's fatal shooting in Ferguson, Mo.

After the officers' killings, a union-generated message at the 35,000-officer NYPD warned officers that they should respond to every radio call with two cars — "no matter what the opinion of the patrol supervisor" — and not make arrests "unless absolutely necessary." The president of the detectives union told members in a letter to work in threes when out on the street, wear bulletproof vests and keep aware of their surroundings.

Another directive warned officers in Newark, New Jersey, not to patrol alone and to avoid people looking for confrontations. At the same time, a memo from an NYPD chief asked officers to limit their comments "via all venues, including social media, to expressions of sorrow and condolence."

In Philadelphia, Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey urged the leaders of protests over the deaths of Garner and Brown to "call for calm and not let this escalate any further." In Boston, Police Commissioner William Evans said police issued an alert to officers to warn them about the New York City slayings and added that the department had issued several alerts following the decision by the Ferguson grand jury.

At a news conference Sunday afternoon, New York City Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce told reporters that Brimsley had numerous run-ins with law enforcement.had been arrested 15 times in Georgia, and four in Ohio for assorted crimes. He ranted online about authority figures and expressed "self-despair and anger at himself and where his life was," Boyce said.

It is sad that we have reached this point in America where cops are targets due to the media playing the race card over and over again.