Congress

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News/Politics 3-12-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

UPDATED

More trouble in Ferguson overnight.

From MSN/TheGuardian  “Two police officers have been shot in Ferguson, Missouri, as a small demonstration wound down in the city gripped by unrest since the fatal shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old last year.

One officer from St Louis County and another from Webster Groves were struck soon after midnight on Wednesday as they stood outside the Ferguson police headquarters, St Louis County police chief Jon Belmar said at a press conference early on Thursday morning.

“These police officers were standing there and they were shot, just because they were police officers,” said Belmar, who added that the officers sustained serious gunshot wounds.

The Webster Groves officer, a 32-year-old who has worked in the department for five years, was shot in the face, according to Belmar. The St Louis County officer, who is 41 and a 17-year law-enforcement veteran, was shot in the shoulder, he said.

Sergeant Brian Schellman, a spokesman for St Louis County police, told the Guardian that both officers were being treated in hospital. “No update yet on condition,” said Schellman. The St Louis Post-Dispatch reported police sources saying both were expected to survive.

Belmar said the shots appeared to have been aimed at the police as they were fired “parallel with the ground” and did not appear to have ricocheted. “I would have to make an assumption that these shots were directed exactly at my police officers,” he said.”

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1. The State Dept. has been the target of the “worst ever” cyber attack. But don’t worry, I’m sure Hillary’s private email server is totally secure. 🙄

From HotAir  “At one point in Hillary Clinton’s slightly less than marathon press conference on Tuesday, the former secretary of state insisted that there were no security breaches of her personal “homebrew” email server. How could she possibly know this? The secretary of state’s emails represent a high-value target for cyber hackers operating out of foreign intelligence agencies, and a breach is unlikely to leave a trace of any activity that the layman or even a cyber-intelligence professional would notice. Just ask the State Department.

“Overlooked in the controversy over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, is the fact that suspected Russian hackers have bedeviled State Department’s email system for much of the past year and continue to pose problems for technicians trying to eradicate the intrusion,” CNN reported on Tuesday.

As a matter of fact, the State Department is currently investigating what federal law enforcing officials are characterizing as the “worst ever” cyber-attack on America’s diplomatic establishment. “The attackers who breached State are also believed to be behind hacks on the White House’s email system, and against several other federal agencies, the officials say,” the CNN report continued.”

“This report noted that even the State Department’s .gov addresses are not entirely secure, and that attacks on unclassified email systems can expose sensitive information to foreign intelligence services. Capture enough sensitive information, and a competent espionage service can piece together classified material. This is not an inconsequential matter.

We know as a result of the infamous Romanian hacker “Guccifer” that Clinton received messages from her longtime private advisor Sydney Blumenthal via email. How do we know? Blumenthal’s emails were compromised, and that hack revealed that he had shared a variety of private intelligence assessments as well as personal communications with Clinton while she served as the nation’s chief diplomat. It’s possible that none of the emails Clinton provided to the State Department included her correspondence with Blumenthal, according to a FOIA request from Gawker.

“The Clinton camp’s claims about the email account being above-board is also contradicted by the State Department’s response to Gawker’s inquires two years ago,” Gawker’s J.K. Trotter observed. “[T]he State Department replied to our request by saying that, after an extensive search, it could find no records responsive to our request.””

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2. Maybe McConnell isn’t as clueless as he acts.

From NationalJournal  “After weeks of Democrats questioning his unwillingness to schedule the nomination of Loretta Lynch to be attorney general, the Senate majority leader announced at a press conference Tuesday that the Senate will vote to confirm her next week. There’s just one catch: Members will have to get past legislation that includes a controversial abortion rider first. “This is bad,” Jessica Brady, a spokeswoman for Judiciary Committee Democrats, said Tuesday.”

“To get their vote on Lynch, Democrats will have to get off of the trafficking bill. And, so far, Republicans aren’t showing any willingness to remove the controversial abortion language.

Democrats are furious that McConnell’s top deputy, Republican Whip John Cornyn, snuck—in their telling—a provision into a bipartisan human-trafficking bill that would prevent any of the funds reserved for trafficking victims from being used on abortions or Plan B contracepton (known as the morning-after pill).

Cornyn argued Tuesday that the legislation including the abortion language was posted publicly on Jan. 13. It earned a dozen Democratic cosponsors and passed the Judiciary Committee unanimously without a single Democratic member or aide flagging the abortion language. It was on page four.

 Democrats discovered the problem Monday night, sending staffers and members into a frenzy. The abortion language was not included in a list of changes made to last year’s trafficking bill sent to Democrats by Republican staffers, Sens. Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin said Tuesday. As a result, the language went unnoticed.”

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3. The Obama admin has some ‘splainin’ to do.

From Breitbart  “The judge who blocked President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration has ordered the Justice Department to answer allegations the government misled him about part of the plan.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen has ordered federal government lawyers to appear in his court March 19 in Brownsville. The hearing is in response to a filing last week in which the government acknowledged some deportation reprieves were granted before Hanen’s Feb. 16 injunction.”

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More here, from MSN/Reuters  “On Monday, Hanen said in a one-page order that the court will not rule on any pending motions at least until a court hearing set for March 19, where government attorneys will have to explain a filing that said some 100,000 people had been given three-year periods of deferred action prior to the judge’s injunction.

Hanen, who has previously criticized U.S. immigration enforcement as too lax, based his Feb. 17 ruling on an administrative law question, faulting Obama’s administration for not giving public notice of his plans. He also cited ways that Texas would be harmed by the action but used no other states as examples.

The decision was an initial victory for 26 states that brought the case alleging Obama had exceeded his powers with executive orders that would let up to 4.7 million illegal immigrants stay without threat of deportation. Obama’s orders bypassed Congress, which has not been able to agree on immigration reform.”

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4. They’ve learned nothing.

From TheWashingtonTimes  “Nearly seven years after it was bailed out from the housing market crash, mortgage giant.

Fannie Mae is still engaging in behavior that could precipitate future financial crises and taxpayer losses, a government watchdog warns in a report to be released Wednesday.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency inspector general said its latest concerns involve Fannie Mae’s “haphazard” decision to fill a critical auditor position with an employee who lacked proper qualifications and suffered from a conflict of interest.

Unless Fannie Mae’s leaders and the audit committee that allowed the hiring do their jobs better, there is a “substantial risk” the mortgage company “will operate in an unsafe and unsound manner, suffer losses and expose U.S. taxpayers to further financial risks,” the inspector general said.

The watchdog also had harsh words for the FHFA, the federal agency that oversees Fannie Mae, saying its own leadership failed to act on concerns about the hiring of the auditor position, choosing instead to stay silent.”

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5. A brief modern history of Congressional “treason.”

From HotAir  “Over the last couple of days, media outlets and some Democrats have lost their minds over the letter signed by 47 Republican Senators, sent to Iran to warn them that President Obama does not have the authority to create a lasting agreement without the participation of Congress. The New York Daily News ran a headline calling them “traitors,” a charge that has been bandied about on social media without any sense of either its legal sense or the history of Congressional influence on foreign policy. A petition on the White House website to arrest the 47 Senators has gathered over 136,000 signatures, in an apparent attempt of the ignorant to publicly self-identify.

Obviously, this situation requires a little history and perspective, as well as a civics lesson on the nature of co-equal branches of government, and on how this latest “treason” stacks up. The US and the Soviet Union conducted a 44-year “cold war” that often turned hot in places like Korea and Vietnam, and yet as Noah pointed out yesterday, Senator Ted Kennedy encouraged the Soviets to interfere in the 1984 election. Noah also mentions Nancy Pelosi’s trip to visit Bashar Assad in 2007 against the Bush administration’s express desires. But there are even more instances that speak more directly to Congressional interference with executive branch efforts on foreign policy.

Joe Scarborough pointed out one example this morning on Twitter from the Reagan era. The Reagan administration wanted to block Soviet influence in the Western hemisphere by backing rebellions against Communist dictators, especially in Nicaragua. Reagan supported the contras against Daniel Ortega, a policy which Democrats opposed and for which they later passed the controversial Boland Amendment in an attempt to restrict Reagan’s options in foreign policy (and which led to the Iran-Contra scandal.) Before Boland, though, 10 Democrats in the House — including Edward Boland (D-MA) — wrote a letter to Ortega called the “Dear Commandante” letter pledging their support to his government. See if this sounds familiar:

The 10 authors include Jim Wright of Texas, the majority leader; Edward P. Boland of Massachusetts, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and other senior Democrats in the foreign policy field. The letter tells Mr. Ortega that it was written ”in a spirit of hopefulness and goodwill” and voices regret that relations between Nicaragua and Washington are not better.

The writers stress that they all oppose further money for rebel campaigns against the Sandinista Government. In a veiled reference to the Reagan Administration, the letter says that if the Sandinistas do hold genuine elections, those who are ”supporting violence” against the Nicaraguan leaders would have ”far greater difficulty winning support for their policies than they do today.””

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by

News/Politics 3-11-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Traitors? Oh please….. 🙄

From HotAir  “Traitors! Wreckers! Saboteurs! The Senate Republicans, consumed as they are with a personal and irrational hatred for the president, have elected to thwart the administration’s glorious efforts to secure a nuclear deal with Iran and safeguard your family’s interests. The Republicans have put your children’s lives at risk with their reckless vandalism in an unprecedented betrayal of both king and country. And so on.

These and other hyperbolic and overwrought pronouncements from the left followed the decision by 47 Republicans in the upper chamber of Congress to remind those negotiating a nuclear deal that their consent to any agreement is ultimately necessary if it is to survive beyond January 20, 2017.”

“There are some, however, who contend that this level of defiance to a sitting president is unprecedented, but it is not. There are others who insist that decorum alone demands that the opposition party in full control of the co-equal legislative chamber should defer to the White House in negotiations with Iran, but they shouldn’t. Finally, there are others who would honestly contend that this display of frustration on the part of Senate Republicans was entirely unprovoked. They are wrong.

In 2007, many on the right were consumed by the same passionate fury with which Democrats presently contend. Then, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) traveled to Syria in a display of dissent against the Bush administration’s approach to foreign affairs. In Damascus, Pelosi represented the American political opposition when she sat down with the murderous thug Bashar al-Assad, a Ba’athist dictator who would begin deploying chemical weapons against his country’s civilian population just five years later.”

“In 1991, it was revealed that the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) proposed quite a coup that might have dangerously undermined American foreign policy in the process. In 1983, then KGB Chairman Viktor Chebrikov composed a memorandum to General Secretary Yuri Andropov, himself a former KGB chief who brutally crushed the anti-Soviet rebellions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia in 1956 and 1968 respectively. The memo revealed that Kennedy had approached the Soviet spy service with an offer. “Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan,” Peter Robinson, a former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, wrote in 2009. “In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election.””

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2. Anybody shocked? And like Hillary, he insists it’s no problem.

From Mediaite  “Secret emails aren’t just a thing that Hillary Clinton uses: Attorney General Eric Holder has a few too, but according to the DOJ, they’re mostly for filtering out spam.

The Huffington Post reports that Holder has gone through three email accounts during his tenure as Attorney General, often using aliases that do not sound anything like “Eric Holder.” According to the Post, his discarded spam email addresses are Henry Yearwood (his mother’s maiden name and a friend’s name) and David Kendricks (a tribute to the Temptations that a spokesman called “soulful”).

It’s all good, though! A DOJ spokesman said that all the email addresses are known to people conducting congressional inquiries and officials handling FOIA requests. But thanks to a few unredacted emails, Holder’s had to change his address to protect from spam, hackers, and spam hackers:”

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3. Some black leaders are upset that Obama used the Selma March anniversary to champion “gay rights.”

From CNSNews  “Conservative black leaders are calling President Barack Obama’s likening of homosexual activism to the 1965 Selma to Montgomery civil rights march “ridiculous” and “an insult.”

“We’re the gay Americans whose blood ran in the streets of San Francisco and New York, just as blood ran down this bridge,” President Obama said in a speech delivered Saturday at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala.”

““To me, it is an insult and every black person ought to be insulted by it,” Bishop Jackson said of Obama’s comparison of homosexual activism to Selma. “Instead of applauding that, we ought to be booing lines like that because it denigrates the tremendous price our ancestors paid to experience the full rights of citizenship in this country.”

“I think it’s a problem not only for the president but for a lot of people, who are deeply misguided, to compare people who are protesting to have their behavior, their sexual behavior, recognized as some kind of civil right or for that matter civil virtue and compare that to people who are trying to vote, trying to go into a restaurant and get a sandwich, are trying to stay in a hotel overnight while they are on the road, trying to sit wherever they want to sit on public accommodation and transportation,” Jackson said.

“To compare those two, to me, it is highly intellectually dishonest or just outright stupid,” said Jackson. “You can’t possibly believe that in your heart of hearts if you’re a thinking person.” “He said our highest ideals, but he’s talking about his own ideals,” said Jackson. “So his definition of what makes our country great is very, very different from mine.””

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4. Obama’s purge of military leaders continues and he has now reached his PC fingers into the chaplain ranks.

From FoxNews  “A chaplain who once ministered to Navy SEALs could be thrown out of the military after he was accused of failing “to show tolerance and respect” in private counseling sessions in regards to issues pertaining to faith, marriage and sexuality, specifically homosexuality and pre-marital sex, according to documents obtained exclusively by Fox News.

Lt. Commander Wes Modder, who is endorsed by the Assemblies of God, has also been accused of being unable to “function in the diverse and pluralistic environment” of the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command in Goose Creek, S.C.

“On multiple occasions he discriminated against students who were of different faiths and backgrounds,” the Chaplain’s commanding Officer Capt. Jon R. Fahs wrote in a memorandum obtained by Fox News.”

“Modder is a highly decorated, 19-year veteran of the military. Prior to becoming a Navy chaplain, he served in the Marine Corps.  His assignments included tours with the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit and Naval Special Warfare Command – where he served as the Force Chaplain of the Navy SEALs. His record is brimming with accolades and endorsements – including from Capt. Fahs.

In Modder’s most recent review, Fahs declared that the chaplain was “the best of the best,” and a “consummate professional leader” worthy of an early promotion.

So how did Chaplain Modder go from being the “best of the best” to being unfit for service in the U.S. military in a span of five months?”

Good question.

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5. It’s good to be the king. And remember folks, this is just the airfare. The 5 star accommodations, the gourmet meals, security, and everything else is all extra.

It’s disgusting, and an abuse of taxpayers.

From JudicialWatch  “Martha’s Vineyard August, 2014 Vacation Cost $400,666.30 in Transportation 

$2,425,085.50 were Spent in Transportation Expenses for Obama’s July, 2014 West Coast Fundraising Trip

Obama Hawaii Christmas vacations over the past three years have cost taxpayers $15,540,515.10 in travel expenses alone;

“Judicial Watch announced today it obtained records from the U.S. Department of the Air Force revealing that the Obama family’s 2014 Christmas vacation to Honolulu, Hawaii, cost taxpayers $3,672,798 in flight expenses alone. Christmas in Hawaii is an annual tradition for the family and their most recent visit, from December 19, 2014, to January 4, 2015, marked their seventh Hawaiianvacation. The documents came from the Department of the Air Force in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed on January 5, 2015.  Costs for the trip to Hawaii, to the West Coast, and to Martha’s Vineyard last year, cost nearly $3 million alone in transportation.

According to the documents, the Obama’s spent 17.8 hours in the air round-trip at $206,337.00 per hour, bringing the total cost to taxpayers to $3,672,798.60.

According to other figures obtained by Judicial Watch over the past three years, Obama Hawaii Christmas vacations have cost taxpayers $15,540,515.10 in transportation expenses alone. This includes outbound and return flight expenses in 2012 totaling $4,086,355.20. (The Secret Service provided documents for Obama’s Christmas 2012 trip to Honolulu. The grand total is $654,599.40 including $409,225.78 in hotels.)  Flight expenses for the Obamas’ Christmas vacations to Hawaii cost taxpayers $7,781,361.30. And the Christmas 2014 flight expense of $3,672,798.60. The average American family spent $4,580 on Christmas in 2014.”

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by

News/Politics 1-6-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. The new Congress is in session.

From TheWeeklyStandard  “The office of House speaker John Boehner announces it’s kicking off the new Congress with a series of jobs bills.”

“Hire More Heroes Act:  The president’s health care law “is prompting many” small businesses “to hold off on hiring and even to shed jobs in some cases,” CNBCreports.  The Hire More Heroes Act will help by exempting veterans who are “already enrolled in healthcare plans through the Department of Defense or the VA from being counted toward the employee limit under the health care law,” the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL), explained in this week’s Republican Address.  “So not only are we providing small businesses – and our economy – with much-needed relief, but we’re also helping more of our veterans find work.”

Save American Workers Act: Thousands of workers have seen their hours and wages slashed thanks to ObamaCare’s employer mandate that forces businesses to hold hours down to 30 per week or face a penalty.  Women and low-income workers are particularly hard hit by the mandate, according to an analysis by the Hoover Institution, which found that the 30-hour rule puts 2.6 million Americans earning less than $30,000 a year – 63% of whom are women – at risk of having their hours and their wages cut.  The Save American Workers Act restores the traditional 40-hour work week to protect these workers and help our economy grow.

Approving the Keystone Pipeline: President Obama has stood in the way of the widely-popular Keystone pipeline for more than six years, putting his own political interests ahead of thousands of jobs and increased energy security for the American people.  The House will once again act where the president has not and approve the Keystone pipeline, keeping the pressure on the White House to finally move forward with what one labor union calls a “lifeline” for American workers.”

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2. But Republicans are still split on who will lead the House.

From TheDailyCaller  “The supposedly routine reelection of House Speaker John Boehner is becoming a dramatic repeat of the GOP’s December split over immigration, where the party’s populist base was jammed by the business-backed leadership.

By mid-Monday, at least 10 defectors said they will vote against Boehner for speaker. A new poll was released showing overwhelming opposition to GOP leaders funding President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty. And the House switchboard was jammed by Republicans who are urging their members to vote against Boehner.

 The Daily Caller was on hold for 25 minutes, but the switchboard operator did not answer the phone.

Boehner needs to win 218 votes in the Tuesday ballot, which is scheduled for midday.”

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3. It should be a required course, but those in charge of public education seem to have other priorities.

From TheNYPost  “When people from other parts of the world become US citizens, they have to pass a test that includes questions about how our system of government works. Why shouldn’t native-born Americans have to know the same?

Many Americans grew up with civics classes. But today, civics instruction has largely been abandoned — former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor calls this “the quiet crisis in education.”

The good news is that a dozen states are trying to make civics a requirement for high-school seniors.”

“We’re not talking about obscure historical trivia or constitutional arguments. The questions involve basic knowledge of how the US government works. For example, students would be asked to name America’s economic system or to identify one of the three branches of government.

This last is apparently more difficult than it might appear: A recent survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania found that 35 percent of the 1,416 adults questioned couldn’t do it.”

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4. I found this interesting.

From MSN/WaPo  “It started 15 years ago with plans to expand the Tower of David Museum. But the story took a strange turn when archaeologists started peeling away layers under the floor in an old abandoned building adjacent to the museum in Jerusalem’s Old City.

They knew it had been used as a prison when the Ottoman Turks and then the British ruled these parts. But, as they carefully dug down, they eventually uncovered something extraordinary: the suspected remains of the palace where one of the more famous scenes of the New Testament may have taken place — the trial of Jesus.

Now, after years of excavation and a further delay caused by wars and a lack of funds, the archaeologists’ precious find is being shown to the public through tours organized by the museum.

The prison “is a great part of the ancient puzzle of Jerusalem and shows the history of this city in a very unique and clear way,” said Amit Re’em, the Jerusalem district archaeologist, who headed the excavation team more than a decade ago.”

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by

News/Politics 10-15-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. We’ll start off today with some busted memes. First up, the “Ebola is the Republicans fault” meme.

From Gov. Bobby Jindal, writing at Politico  “In a paid speech last week, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attempted to link spending restraints enacted by Congress—and signed into law by President Obama—to the fight against Ebola. Secretary Clinton claimed that the spending reductions mandated under sequestration “are really beginning to hurt,” citing the fight against Ebola: “The CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] is another example on the response to Ebola—they’re working heroically, but they don’t have the resources they used to have.”

Her argument, like those made by others, misses the point. In recent years, the CDC has received significant amounts of funding. Unfortunately, however, many of those funds have been diverted away from programs that can fight infectious diseases, and toward programs far afield from the CDC’s original purpose.

Consider the Prevention and Public Health Fund, a new series of annual mandatory appropriations created by Obamacare. Over the past five years, the CDC has received just under $3 billion in transfers from the fund. Yet only 6 percent—$180 million—of that $3 billion went toward building epidemiology and laboratory capacity. Especially given the agency’s postwar roots as the Communicable Disease Center, one would think that “detecting and responding to infectious diseases and other public health threats” warrants a larger funding commitment.

Instead, the Obama administration has focused the CDC on other priorities. While protecting Americans from infectious diseases received only $180 million from the Prevention Fund, the community transformation grant program received nearly three times as much money—$517.3 million over the same five-year period.”

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More from EricErickson  “According to the Atlanta Business Chronicle, in January the CDC won in the budget deal.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will see an 8.2 percent budget increase for fiscal 2014, thanks to a $1.1 trillion spending bill announced by Congress Jan. 13.

But not just that. There was also this nugget of news:

This influx of cash will raise the CDC budget to $6.9 billion, which is $567 million more than it received in 2013. This is more than the agency anticipated, because the president’s fiscal year 2014 budget request for it was just $6.6 billion — a decrease of $270 million from fiscal 2012.

Yes, you read that right. Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to give the CDC more money that President Obama requested. And what did the CDC intend to do with all that money. Cure Ebola?

Well, umm . . . .

The CDC listed some of its top spending priorities in its fiscal 2014 budget request. It wants to boost spending for vaccines for children by $287 million and increase funds by $53 million for its “World Trade Center Health Program.” It requested a $40 million increase for AMD, $22 million more for Health Statistics, $20 million more for its National Violent Death Reporting System, almost $17 million more for Food Safety and an additional $15 million for polio eradication.”

Like I said, busted. And maybe they’d have appropriate funding if they weren’t wasting it on studies to find out why lesbians are overweight and other such nonsense. Just sayin’…..

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Next up, a double meme buster. The “Republican’s are the party of the rich” and the “Democrats are for the average guy” meme. It’s not just Democrat donors like Soros and Rich Richman that are busting these memes.

From MSN  “It has long been a given that politics is a rich man’s game, and there is nothing in Roll Call’s latest compilation of the 50 richest members of Congress to contradict that notion.

The publication’s annual report reveals that about one in ten of the 535 members of the House and Senate rank among the nation’s top one percent financially based on their net worth.

Some of those lawmakers may be troubled from time to time to be associated with so reviled an institution as Congress, which is saddled with an approval rating averaging a lowly 14 percent. But they can take solace in their personal financial balance sheets, with some showing their net worth in hundreds of millions of dollars.”

8 out of the top 8 are Democrats. This one’s all busted up.

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And the last one, also a double, the “Gun free zones stop crazy people with guns” meme and the “Mass shootings are on the rise” meme.

From Breitbart  “On October 9, the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) released a revised report showing that 92% of mass public shootings between January 2009 and July 2014 took place in gun-free zones.

The CPRC report was released in response to an Everytown for Gun Safety study claiming only 14% of mass public shootings took place in gun-free zones. Everytown actually claimed 86% of such incidents occurred in places where guns were allowed.

CPRC showed that the 86% claim rests on Everytown’s “inclusion of attacks in private homes” and “numerous errors in identifying whether citizens can defend themselves.” For example, Everytown “[ignores] rules that prevent general citizens from carrying guns [for self-defense]” in certain cities, and they fail to recognize that “allowing police to carry guns is not the same thing as letting civilians defend themselves.””

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More here from LegalInsurrection  “An FBI report released on September 16th, 2014 makes the assertion that active shooter attacks and deaths have increased dramatically since 2000 – both increasing at an annual rate of about 16 percent. As the headline in the Wall Street Journal stated: “Mass Shootings on the Rise, FBI says.”

But the FBI made a number of subtle and misleading decisions as well as outright errors. Once these biases and mistakes are fixed, the annual growth rate in homicides is cut in half. When a longer period of time is examined (1977 through the first half of 2014), deaths from Mass Public Shootings show only a slight, statistically insignificant, increase – an annual increase of less than one percent.

The FBI’s misleadingly includes cases that aren’t mass shootings – cases where no one or only one person was killed in a public place. While the FBI assures people that it “captured the vast majority of incidents falling within the search criteria,” their report missed 20 shootings where at least two people were killed in a public place. Most of these missing cases took place early on, biasing their results towards showing an increase.”“

Do these people ever tell the truth? Everything is half-truths and exaggerations from them.

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2. Another feel good idea bites the dust. Or at least it should, but they’ll probably just throw more money at it.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “As school children continue to protest Michelle Obama’s push for healthier lunches by dumping their full trays into garbage bins, the nation’s school boards are joining in to demand that the Obama administration let them off the hook of serving the costly and tasteless meals.

Armed with a national poll for National School Lunch Week, the National School Boards Association on Monday demanded that Washington address the “onerous requirements for federal school meal programs.””

“The survey of school leaders revealed:

— 83.7 percent of school districts saw an increase in plate waste.

— 81.8 percent had an increase in cost.

— 76.5 percent saw a decrease in participation by students.

— 75 percent of school leaders want an increase in federal funding for school districts to comply with the new standards.”

It’s not working.

From CNSNews  “In the first two years since First Lady Michelle Obama launched her ‘Let’s Move’ campaign to fight childhood obesity in 2010, teenage obesity rates increased, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

From 2009-2010, 18.4 percent of children ages 12-19 were classified as obese, according to the CDC. Since then, from 2011-2012, one in five children ages 12-19 or 20.5 percent, were classified as obese, an increase of 11.4 percent. The CDC has been tracking these data since 1966-1970, and at that time only 4.6 percent of teens were classified as obese.”

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3. Not good.

From TheHill  “Global health officials said Tuesday that the death rate in the Ebola epidemic has risen to 70 percent, up from 50 percent.

The World Health Organization (WHO) made the announcement at a news conference in Geneva, where officials said there could be up to 10,000 new cases of the virus every week within two months.

A total of 4,447 people have died from Ebola this year, the WHO said, while 8,914 have been sickened. Experts believe the real number of Ebola victims is much bigger than the official figures due to difficulties in reporting the cases.

WHO Assistant Director-General Dr. Bruce Aylward underscored the need for a more robust international response to Ebola with a timetable.

If the effort to fight Ebola is not intensified within 60 days, he said, deaths will mount and the virus will become even harder to control.”

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4. Here’s more on the story 6 Arrows posted a link to last night, from the group fighting the overreach by city officials.

From AllianceDefendingFreedom  “City officials are upset over a voter lawsuit filed after the city council rejected valid petitions to repeal a law that allows members of the opposite sex into each other’s restrooms. ADF attorneys say the city is illegitimately demanding that the pastors, who are not party to the lawsuit, turn over their constitutionally protected sermons and other communications simply so the city can see if the pastors have ever opposed or criticized the city.

“City council members are supposed to be public servants, not ‘Big Brother’ overlords who will tolerate no dissent or challenge,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Erik Stanley. “In this case, they have embarked upon a witch-hunt, and we are asking the court to put a stop to it.”

“The city’s subpoena of sermons and other pastoral communications is both needless and unprecedented,” said ADF Litigation Counsel Christiana Holcomb. “The city council and its attorneys are engaging in an inquisition designed to stifle any critique of its actions. Political and social commentary is not a crime; it is protected by the First Amendment.”

In June, the Houston City Council passed its “bathroom bill,” which sparked a citizen initiative to have the council either repeal the bill or place it on the ballot for voters to decide. The public submitted more than three times the legally required number of valid signatures, which the city secretary, who is entrusted by law to examine and certify petitions, certified as sufficient. The mayor and city attorney defied the law and rejected the certification.”

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5. Is the federal appeals court system stacking the deck for gay marriage rulings? Wouldn’t surprise me.

From BuzzFeed  ” The lawyer representing the group that supports Nevada’s ban on same-sex couples’ marriages made an explosive claim on Monday: He argued that a federal appeals court appears to have picked specific judges “in order to influence the outcome” of marriage cases.”

“One of the reasons he asked for the rehearing, he claimed, is the “high likelihood that the number of Judges [Stephen] Reinhardt and [Marsha] Berzon’s assignments to the Relevant Cases, including this and the Hawaii and Idaho marriage cases (which we treat as one for these purposes), did not result from a neutral judge-assignment process.”

Stewart wrote that the claim was the result of “careful statistical analysis” by Dr. James H. Matis.

Stewart went further, writing, “The appearance of unfairness is not a close question here. Even without the aid of professional statisticians, a reasonable person will immediately sense that something is amiss when one judge out of more than thirty is assigned over a four and one-half year period to five of this Circuit’s eleven cases involving the federal constitutional rights of gay men and lesbians, another to four of those cases, and both of them to the momentous ‘gay marriage’ cases.”

In an affidavit filed and signed by Stewart with the filing, he noted the legal team’s decision to obtain the analysis from Matis and includes Stewart’s personal conclusion that the panel of judges that heard the Nevada marriage case was one of the most favorable possible panels for the same-sex couple plaintiffs and “among the least favorable” for “the man-woman marriage side.” He then added that “such preferences and conclusions are known and understood by all at the Ninth Circuit involved with the judge-assignment process.”

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6. Ah yes, the extortion racket. 🙄

That’s a lovely country you have there…..

Be a shame if somethin’ were to happen to it…..

From Yahoo/Reuters  “The United States should provide billions of dollars to help Central American nations curb the flow of illegal migrants, Guatemalan President Otto Perez said, and his government warns the problem will get worse if Washington fails to help.

Fleeing violence, trying to reach relatives already in the United States or seeking jobs, record numbers of child migrants from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have been stopped at the southern U.S. border this year, causing widespread alarm.

Last month, the three countries pitched Washington an ambitious development plan to confront the issue.

They want to pump about $10 billion into the region to create jobs and lift living standards, with the bulk of funding coming from the United States, Perez told Reuters.”

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News/Politics 9-12-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Obama: I was against the authorization for war before I was for it.

From TheCable  “President Barack Obama’s plans to ramp up U.S. airstrikes against Islamic State targets inside Iraq and potentially launch new ones inside Syria rely on a thirteen-year-old law authorizing military force against al Qaeda and its affiliates that he has publicly stated he would like to see repealed.

In a landmark speech last year in which he pledged to take the United States off a “perpetual wartime footing,” Obama said that he would work with Congress to “refine” and “ultimately repeal” the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF, a measure hastily passed in the chaotic, fear-filled days following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. That measure authorized “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons” responsible for the attacks.”

In his remarks Wednesday, Obama made clear that he believes he can take action against Islamic State militants without congressional approval but extended an olive branch to Capitol Hill, saying that he welcomed “congressional support for this effort in order to show the world that Americans are united in confronting this danger.” The White House is currently seeking congressional approval for a program to train and arm the Syrian opposition, one of the few things Obama doesn’t believe he can do unilaterally. To date, the administration has mostly sidestepped the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which mandates that the president seek congressional approval of any military action after 60 days of informing Congress that U.S. troops have been deployed in hostilities.”

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2. John Kerry says we’re not at war.

From CNN  “U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday would not say the United States is at war with ISIS, telling CNN in an interview that the administration’s strategy includes “many different things that one doesn’t think of normally in context of war.”

“What we are doing is engaging in a very significant counterterrorism operation,” Kerry told CNN’s Elise Labott in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. “It’s going to go on for some period of time. If somebody wants to think about it as being a war with ISIL, they can do so, but the fact is it’s a major counterterrorism operation that will have many different moving parts.””

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3. Congress says authorization from them is needed.

From HotAir  “What started as a trickle is starting to feel like a flood. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are demanding that President Barack Obama seek their explicit approval for a new war in the Middle East, and it would be shortsighted for the president to ignore them.

The first and most salient reason why the president should seek out a congressional vote on a resolution authorizing force against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is that no such authorization currently exists. Though it remains on the books, the White House considers the 2002 Iraq resolution authorizing force to be defunct and has requested that it be repealed. It would be a perversion of the 2001 AUMF, which allows the President of the United States to attack al-Qaeda, to use that as authorization to attack the Islamic State. These terrorist organizations are two completely distinct entities and, at times, even adversaries.

Moreover, the president’s current justification for expanded “sovereignty strikes” in Iraq is particularly flimsy. The threat ISIS poses to American diplomatic and military assets in Baghdad and Erbil originally justified limited airstrikes, but using that logic to justify strikes on ISIS positions around strategically key sites like the Haditha Dam (The administration claims that the dam’s bursting could create a biblical flood which would eventually swamp the Green Zone in Baghdad) strains credulity.

Obama’s administration claims that the Constitution provides the president with the authority he needs to execute strikes in Syria, but the president did not believe he had that authority one year ago. When he sought strikes on targets in Syria in 2013, the president insisted that Congress would need to explicitly authorize that action. Today, Obama says he would welcome a congressional “buy in” in support of airstrikes inside that sovereign country, but his hand will not be stayed if that tacit consent is not forthcoming.”

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4. ISIS brothels full of kidnapped women are being run by British female jihadists.

From TheDailyMail  “Thousands of Iraqi women are being forced into sex slavery in brothels run by a ‘police force’ of British women jihadis, it has been reported.

As many as 3,000 women and girls have been taken captive from the Yazidi tribe in Iraq as Isis militants continue their reign of terror across the region.

Sources now say that British female jihadis operating a religious police force called the al-Khanssaa brigade, that punishes women for ‘un-Islamic’ behaviour, have set up brothels to for the use of Isis fighters.”

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5. And yet they’re allowed to vote….

From RasmussenReports  “Over one-third of Likely U.S. Voters remain unaware which political party controls the House of Representatives and which has a majority in the Senate – less than two months before an election that may put one party in charge of both.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 63% are aware that Republicans have majority control of the House. An identical number (63%) know that Democrats run the Senate.

Twenty percent (20%) mistakenly believe Democrats control the House, while 17% are not sure. Similarly, 18% think the GOP is in charge in the Senate, but 19% are not sure. (To see survey question wording.”

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6. Deportations of illegal immigrants is down.

From TheAP  “President Barack Obama has quietly slowed deportations by nearly 20 percent while delaying plans to act on his own potentially to shield millions of immigrants from expulsion.

The Homeland Security Department is on pace to remove the fewest number of immigrants since 2007, according to an analysis of its data by The Associated Press.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency responsible for deportations, sent home 258,608 immigrants between the start of the budget year last Oct. 1 and July 28 this summer, a decrease of nearly 20 percent from the same period in 2013, when 320,167 people were removed.

Over 10 months in 2012, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported 344,624 people, some 25 percent more than this year, according to federal figures obtained by the AP.”

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7. All the more reason to send them back home.

From TheWashingtonPost  “All summer, Central American children caught at the U.S.-Mexico border have been trickling into the Washington area, sent to live with relatives in Latino communities. Now, they are descending en masse on the region’s public schools, bringing an array of problems that school officials are scrambling to address.

Ripped from distant worlds, most of the new students speak no English, and some are psychologically scarred from abuse by gangs or smugglers. Reunited with parents or other relatives they barely know, and still grieving for family and friends back home, they may feel depressed and resentful.

“Some of these kids arrive feeling very angry,” said Rina Chavez, a counselor with the Montgomery County schools. “After years of living with their grandparents, suddenly here they are with mom and a new stepdad and two younger siblings. Then they are expected in a heartbeat to sit down and learn, but they may not be ready.”

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by

News/Politics 7-16-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Well I’m sure the world will be happy to hear this…..

🙄

From CNSNews  “White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Monday the Obama administration’s foreign policies in a number of areas have enhanced the world’s “tranquility” – a word that raised eyebrows as reporters pointed to situations in Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Ukraine and the South China Sea.

More than one reporter during Monday’s press briefing referred to a front-page Wall Street Journal article highlighting some of those crises, and citing security strategists as saying “the breadth of global instability now unfolding hasn’t been seen since the late 1970s.”

“How does the White House react to the notion that the president is a bystander to all these crises?” asked Fox News’ Ed Henry, citing the widening gaps between the sides in the Iranian nuclear talks, the conflict in and around Gaza, and the Syrian civil war.

“I think that there have been a number of situations in which you’ve seen this administration intervene in a meaningful way, that has substantially furthered American interests and substantially improved the, uh, you know, the – the tranquility of the global community,” Earnest replied.”

Uh, you know, places like Syria, Egypt, Libya, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, the Mexican border, etc., etc.,…. The places where Obama’s intervened in a meaningful way. 🙄

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2. Good. And while it’s bad that they may not be able to catch all the cheats, it’s still better than giving them the resources if they’re going to misuse them on political witch hunts anyway.

From TheAP  “The GOP-controlled House has voted to slash the budget for the Internal Revenue Service’s tax enforcement division by $1.2 billion, a 25 percent cut that would mean fewer audits of taxpayers and make it more likely that people who cheat on their taxes will get away with it.

The House approved the cuts by voice vote after little debate Monday night as it took up a $21 billion spending bill that sets the IRS budget.

The cuts reflect GOP outrage over the agency’s scrutiny of tea party groups seeking tax-exempt status and frustration over the agency’s failure to produce thousands of emails by Lois Lerner, the official formerly in charge of the IRS division that processes applications for tax-exempt status.

“The use of a government agency to harass, target, intimidate and threaten lawful, honest citizens was the worst form of authoritarianism,” said Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., author of an amendment to cut the IRS tax enforcement budget by $353 million. Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., followed up with an amendment to cut $788 million more. The underlying bill already contained a $72 million cut from last year’s $5 billion enforcement budget, bringing the total cut to $1.2 billion.”

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3. Gee, maybe this is why they stopped touting their bogus enrollees number.

From TheWeeklyStandard  “In March 2010, Obamacare was about to be voted upon by the House of Representatives, and the Democrats were in the process of deciding whether to ignore public opinion at their peril.  At that time, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that Obamacare would cost $938 billion over a decade and would reduce the number of uninsured people by 19 million as of 2014 (with a reduction of 1 million prior to 2014 and 18 million in 2014 alone).  Unimpressed, the American people overwhelmingly opposed the intrusive overhaul — with 20 of 21 polls taken that month showing it to be unpopular, most of them by double digits. The Democrats willfully passed Obamacare anyway and lost 63 House seats that November.

Two years later, the Supreme Court declared Obamacare’s coercive Medicaid expansion to be unconstitutional as written, and the CBO adjusted its projection for the number of uninsured accordingly.  It projected that Obamacare would reduce the number of uninsured by 14 million as of 2014 (2 million before 2014 and 12 million in 2014 alone), at a 10-year cost of $1.677 trillion — or $739 billion more than the 2010 projection.  (This February, the CBO projected that Obamacare’s 10-year cost would eclipse $2 trillion.)

n February of this year, the CBO projected that Obamacare would reduce the number of uninsured by 13 million as of 2014.  In April, the CBO had seen enough of the Obama administration’s skillful rollout of Obamacare to reduce that estimate to 12 million.

Now the Urban Institute finds that Obamacare has actually reduced the number of uninsured adults by 8 million since the rollout began last fall.  (Gallup shows a similar number.)  That’s far short of the number of newly insured that the CBO projected in April of this year, in February of this year, or in 2012 — and it’s less than half the tally the American people were told Obamacare would hit when they opposed it in 2010. “

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4. The problems at the VA continue.

From TheWashingtonTimes  “The VA’s rush to cut a huge backlog of claims from disabled veterans has forced it to cut corners elsewhere, and yet the department is still botching about one out of every 10 claims decisions, top officials and whistleblowers testified to Congress on Monday, signaling that the problems go far beyond the hospital wait times that have plagued it.

The very program the Obama administration started to years ago to cut the backlog has resulted in bad decisions that have forced many veterans into a lengthy appeals process, and created backlogs in other claims such as dependents’ benefits, members of the House Veterans Affairs Committee concluded.”

“These are veterans. I mean, somebody would be asleep at the wheel not to realize these things were going up,” said Ronald Robinson, a senior veterans service representative, former Army first sergeant, and one of three whistleblowers to testify.

In one dramatic moment, committee Chairman Jeff Miller, Florida Republican, posted a handwritten note one of his staffers had seen on a site visit to Philadelphia in which a top regional VA executive had written that committee investigators were to be ignored, and that singled out known whistleblowers.”

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5. I have no problem with charges of vandalism and destruction of public property charges for the perps. But a hate crime? Really? Now they’re just being stupid. 🙄

From CarrollCountyTimes  “Maryland State Police have classified anti-immigration graffiti spray painted on the former Army Reserve Center in Westminster as a hate crime. The graffiti was sprayed sometime Saturday night or early Sunday morning, according to Lt. Patrick McCrory, commander of the state police Westminster barracks.

The graffiti said “NO ILLEAGLES [sic] HERE NO UNDOCUMENTED DEMOCRATS.”

It was spray-painted on the front of the Army Reserve Center, which recently became embroiled in controversy when the Obama administration considered using the facility to house immigrant children caught crossing the US-Mexico border illegally.

The Carroll County Board of Commissioners spoke out against the federal government’s plan on Friday during an emergency cabinet meeting. Commissioners attending the meeting pledged not to provide any assistance to federal agencies if or when they moved the children to the facility. “

Who’s the genius leading the investigation, Joe Biden? 🙄

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by

News/Politics 7-10-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

Lots to talk about today.

1. There’s no reason for this. It serves no other purpose but to insult.

From TheDailyMail  “The rebels, who are members of the Islamic State terror group, were filmed attacking centuries-old graves in the north-west city of Mosul in Ninevah province.

Donning balaclavas and black coats, they swung sledgehammers into the tombs, causing pieces of dust and stone to fly through the air.”

“One of the devastated tombstones belonged to the Prophet Jonah (Younis in Arabic) and was revered by Muslims and Christians alike, according to Iraqi authorities.”

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2. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I have no interest whatsoever in anything aiding pedophiles, but this sets a very dangerous precedent, even for non-Catholics. Imagine the effect this could have on people seeking spiritual guidance that they think is, and should be, protected conversations.

From HotAir  “Many observers misunderstood the Hobby Lobby dispute and others like it as a First Amendment case, but it wasn’t. It primarily related to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), with an indirect reference to the constitutional freedom of religious expression. A case in Louisiana may be the real McCoy, though. The Louisiana Supreme Court has ruled that a priest must testify in a case about what he heard in a confessional — an order that would result in automatic excommunication and damnation, according to the doctrine and canon law of the Catholic Church:

The state high court’s decision, rendered in May of this year, demands that a hearing be held in 19th Judicial District Court in Baton Rouge, where the suit originated, to determine whether or not a confession was made. It reverses an earlier decision by the Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeals dismissing the original lawsuit filed against Bayhi and the diocese. The case stems from a claim by parents of a minor that their daughter confessed to Bayhi during the sacrament of reconciliation that she engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior with grown man who also attended their church. Court documents indicate the child was 12 years old at the time of the alleged sexual abuse.”

“This case gets complicated for a couple of reasons. While the common perception has been that priests cannot be forced to testify about confessions in the US because of ministerial privilege and the First Amendment, that privilege gets defined by each state separately. In Louisiana, the privilege attaches to the person offering the confession and not the priest. Once the penitent has revealed what was said — or perhaps more to the specific point in this case, alleges to have revealed what was said — the state can subpoena the priest to confirm or deny the testimony. In that sense, it’s akin to the lawyer-client privilege, which can be broken by the client.

On the other hand, lawyers don’t face eternal disbarment for testifying once a client has waived the privilege. Priests do, and face automatic expulsion from the Catholic Church for complying. There is nothing in church doctrine that requires a penitent to keep quiet about what transpires in the confessional, but the canon law is clear on this point. Can. 983 states that “The sacramental seal is inviolable; therefore it is absolutely forbidden for a confessor to betray in any way a penitent in words or in any manner and for any reason.” The punishment for breaking the seal is explicitly noted in Can. 1388: “A confessor who directly violates the sacramental seal incurs a latae sententiae [by the commission of the act] excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See; one who does so only indirectly is to be punished according to the gravity of the delict.”

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3. Thoughts?

Also from HotAir  “Turns out the American public thinks Jesus is a pro-life liberal. Who knew?

The latest research from YouGov shows that on social issues in particular Americans tend to have more liberal attitudes than imagine say Jesus would have. 48% of the public supports legal abortion, compared to only 20% who say Jesus would support it, the biggest divide between public opinion and expectations of what Jesus would think. Only on one issue, the death penalty, do the public stake out a more conservative position, with 58% in favor of the death penalty for murderers compared to 34% who say that Jesus would support it. The smallest difference in attitude is on universal healthcare. 56% of Americans support universal healthcare and 55% of Americans say that Jesus would support it too…

Comparing Protestants and Catholics we see that Jesus’ imagined position amongst Protestants is more conservative than amongst Catholics. A third of Catholics say that Jesus would support gay marriage, compared to only 20% of Protestants. Most Catholics also say that Jesus would support universal healthcare and stricter gun laws, while in each case less than half of Protestants agree.

Abortion and gay marriage were the only issues tested in which more people thought Jesus would take the traditional conservative position than the liberal one. When asked if he’d support or oppose legal abortion, a clear majority of 20/52 overall said the latter:”

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4. Now we’re starting to see what they’ve been hiding. Well….. the stuff they haven’t already destroyed anyway.

Nope. No scandal here. 🙄

From TheWashingtonTimes  “Just as the IRS tea party targeting scandal was erupting, Lois G. Lerner warned colleagues to “be cautious” about what information they put in emails because it could end up being turned over to Congress, according to an email message released Wednesday.

The 2013 email exchange between Ms. Lerner and fellow employees at the Internal Revenue Service also says that instant message conversations were probably never stored and weren’t checked during open-records requests — even though they also fell under the law requiring electronic records to be stored.”

“I was cautioning folks about email and how we have had several occasions where Congress has asked for emails and there has been an electronic search for responsive emails — so we need to be cautious about what we say in emails,” Ms. Lerner wrote in an April 9, 2013, message.

She went on to ask whether the instant message communications were stored automatically. When a tech staffer said no but the records could be stored if employees copied them, she replied, “Perfect.”

Yes, perfect…. for criminals trying to hide their actions.

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5. Ray Nagin has gotten ten years in prison for taking bribes and corruption.

From NBCNews  “Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was sentenced Wednesday to 120 months in prison. U.S. District Judge Helen Berrigan also ordered Nagin to pay $84,000 in restitution. “What Ray Nagin did was sell his office over and over again,” lead prosecutor Matt Coman said after the sentencing. “The damage that C. Ray Nagin inflicted on this community … is incalculable.” He will report to a minimum security prison in September.

Nagin, 58, was convicted on Feb. 12 of accepting more than $500,000 worth of bribes and free trips from contractors in exchange for helping them clinch millions of dollars in city work when he was mayor of New Orleans, both pre- and post-Hurricane Katrina. He was found guilty of 20 out of 21 counts in the indictment. Nagin, a Democrat who was mayor for two terms from 2002 to 2010, denied he took any bribes.”

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6. Why worry about doing your job, when there’s more important things to do. Like pander to outraged libs.

From TheHill  “Senate Democrats will offer legislation Wednesday morning to reverse last week’s Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Supreme Court ruling on contraception coverage, though the measure has no chance of passing the House.

The measure from Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) seeks to stop corporations from refusing federal healthcare coverage mandates on religious grounds.

Murray is spearheading the effort by Senate Democrats to turn the tables on Republican supporters of the ruling ahead of the midterm elections.

The Democrats, aware that the House would never defy the court’s ruling but confident the public sides with them, want to draw the GOP into a political fight over birth control in order to energize women voters.”

They can’t run on their pathetic record, so they’ll drag out the old “war on women” horse for another beating. How original… 🙄

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7. Not surprising. They don’t want people to see what’s going on in these facilities.

From TheBlaze  “Department of Homeland Security officials are stonewalling lawmakers who try to make unannounced visits to immigrant detention facilities throughout the country and are closing off public roads along the U.S.-Mexico border in an effort to keep journalists from reporting on the growing illegal immigration crisis, federal law enforcement officials told TheBlaze.

The officials said senior supervisors have made scheduling visits ahead of time mandatory at detention facilities, turned back officials from unannounced visits, and that Border Patrol agents have been forced to clean up facilities and transfer illegal aliens from unauthorized holding cells before they are inspected by lawmakers. Reporters have also been stopped by DHS officials from traveling along public access roads near the Rio Grande, where most of illegal immigrant children and groups are crossing into the U.S.

The media crackdown along the Rio Grande happened shortly after TheBlaze visited the region last month and traveled  along some of the more secluded roads along the river’s edge. TheBlaze witnessed dozens of illegal immigrants turning themselves in to Border Patrol agents after making the  crossing into the United States and interviewed many of them before they were taken away.”

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8. Meanwhile, the pushback from the communities they’re dumping the illegals in continues.

From WatchDogWire  “The current crisis on the southern border, involving tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, has now become a concern for Michiganders who live in a rural community with less than 3000 people.

Wolverine Human Services, a social services agency which typically helps needy Michigan children, is in the process of securing a contract and negotiating with the Office of Refugee Resettlement to bring between 60- 120 male illegal immigrants, between the ages of 12-17, to the small city of Vassar without any input from residents of the community.

About 100 concerned citizens, some bearing signs, gathered outside the Vassar City Hall last night to let public officials know what they think.”

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9. Liberal academia hate competing views that go against their dogma. So it’s not surprising that they would push abortion while calling a good alternative a bad thing in order to scare people away from it.

From CampusReform  “The University of Chicago (UC) has published an “abortion guide” on its website providing information on abortion— including how to obtain one on campus.

The website—titled “abguide”—is a comprehensive guide detailing how to pay for abortion, where to find an abortion provider in the area, and what to expect from an abortion. While the site touts “options counseling,” it warns against crisis pregnancy centers, saying they could “lead to suicide” or “post-abortion stress disorder.”

UC’s abortion guide is based on principles outlined by the Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice, an organization that claims the fight for women’s reproductive justice through youth organizing, environmental justice, and workers rights. The group affirms their cause stems from the civil rights movement of the 1960’s.”

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by

News/Politics 7-7-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Did ObamaCare make matters worse at the VA and contribute to the backlog in processing VA claims? Sure sounds like it.

From TruthRevolt   “A Veterans Affairs whistleblower from Atlanta will testify before Congress next Tuesday about widespread destruction of applications, retaliation against whistleblowers, and people being shifted from processing VA applications last summer to working on Obamacare enrollment.

Scott Davis is a program specialist at the VA’s national Health Eligibility Center in DeKalb County, Georgia. His story was published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution this past Sunday and appeared on the Neil Cavuto program on Fox News Wednesday.  As opposed to previous whistleblower reports, which focus VA hospitals and getting to see doctors, Davis’ revelations are about the processing of applications by VA offices.  

Davis told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that health benefit applications for more than 10,000 veterans may have been improperly purged from the Health Eligibility Center’s national data system. He began filing complaints in January 2014, revealing that managers were focused more on meeting goals linked to the Affordable Care Act to meet their bonus targets than processing VA applications.

We don’t discuss veterans. We do not work for veterans. That is something that I learned after working there. Our customer is the VA central office, the White House and the Congress. The veterans are not our priority. So whatever the initiatives are or the big ticket items, that is what we focus on.”

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2. And as always, the Obama admin has retaliated against the whistleblower. That’s easier than fixing the problems they’re pointing out.

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3. Don’t you just love bi-partisan acts by Congress? It’s so nice when the parties both agree……

to quietly change the rules for reporting freebies they receive from lobbyists. 🙄

From IJReview  “A member of Congress used to have to specifically report the details if they traveled on someone else’s dime. As of last week, that rule was lifted with no public announcement. National Journal reports:

The move, made behind closed doors and without a public announcement by the House Ethics Committee, reverses more than three decades of precedent. Gifts of free travel to lawmakers have appeared on the yearly financial form dating back its creation in the late 1970s, after the Watergate scandal. National Journal uncovered the deleted disclosure requirement when analyzing the most recent batch of yearly filings.

For a group of officials that considers an adjustment to their burrito order worthy of a press release and a television appearance, that this change was made literally behind closed doors tells us everything we need to know about it. Members of both parties reached across the aisle and kept their mouths shut about it.

These trips still must be reported to the Office of the Clerk and disclosed there, but the decades-old requirement for individual members to also disclose their particular activities on their annual financial forms is now gone.”

They still report it, but now it’s in an area where no one would look. Now that’s transparency.

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4. The Obama EPA continues to expand it’s illegal power grabs. Control the water, you control the people. Just ask California.

Also From TheIJReview  “The Environmental Protection Agency is planning to expand its jurisdiction over the nation’s waterways under the Clean Water Act to include ditches, small streams, ponds, and other purely local waterways.

Nearly 204,000 comments have been received since the rule was proposed on April 21, 2014, mostly from Americans opposed to it. Ten U.S. senators also sent a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy expressing their concerns about the proposed rule changes.

Among the examples of potential overreach the senators cite are attempts by environmentalists to ban fireworks at Lake Tahoe along the border of California and Nevada. The senators fear the expanded EPA jurisdiction could led to similar lawsuits in other places.”

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5. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before….

Less people working, plus a lowering unemployment number, equals fuzzy math. Again.

From CNSNews  “The number of Americans 16 and older who did not participate in the labor force climbed to a record high of 92,120,000 in June, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

This means that there were 92,120,000 Americans 16 and older who not only did not have a job, but did not actively seek one in the last four weeks.

That is up 111,000 from the 92,009,000 Americans who were not participating in the labor force in April.”

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News/Politics 11-16-13

What’s interesting in the news today?

We lost power last night and didn’t get it back until the wee hours. So only a few from me today, but it’s an open thread so I’m sure you folks can come up with more. 🙂

1. The House passed the Upton Bill, with Democrat support I might add. Why they would give Democrats an out like this is beyond me.

From Politico  “The White House reiterated its veto threat of a just-passed House bill to allow insurance companies to continue selling insurance plans that don’t meet the minimum requirements of the Affordable Care Act.

The House passed the legislation introduced by Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) with 261 votes, including 39 Democrats who defied President Barack Obama’s veto threat issued Thursday evening.

“We absolutely do not support and oppose the Upton bill,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said minutes after Friday’s House vote.”

Obama will veto it. He kinda has to. He can’t have Republicans getting credit for fixing his mess.

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2. Once again, Congress gets special perks the rest of us aren’t allowed to have.

From CNSNews   “Under Obamacare — as it is being implemented  under a regulation issued by the White House Office of Personnel  Management (OPM) — a middle-aged member of Congress who earns an annual  salary of $174,000 from the taxpayers, and who has a wife and children,  will get a $10,000 subsidy from the taxpayers (over and above his  $174,000 salary) to buy a health insurance plan that a regular citizen  making almost $80,000 less than the congressman will not get.”

“Americans in the private sector who buy health insurance through the Obamacare exchanges only get a federal subsidy (a tax credit) if their income/family situation is below 400% of poverty, the ceiling for which is $94,200 for a family of four.

If they surpass that 400% level, then no subsidy.  Theoretically, a  family bringing in $174,000, like a member of Congress, would have to  have 12 children dependents to even be eligible for a subsidy under the Obamacare rules.”

We don’t even get cake to eat.

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3. The more we know, the worse it gets. Now we know why a cover-up from the White House was necessary. They had to hide details like this, which raise even more questions.

From FoxNews  “The terrorists who attacked the Benghazi consulate last year knew the location of the safe room where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his security team sought shelter, according to a congressman who spoke for 90 minutes with the diplomatic security agent severely injured in the assault.

“He confirmed this – that it was a very well orchestrated, and well organized, almost a military operation, using military weapons and using military signals,” the late Florida Rep. Bill Young said after meeting diplomatic security agent David Ubben at Walter Reed Medical Center last summer, when both were patients there.”

“”He (Ubben) emphasized the fact that it was a very, very military type of operation they had knowledge of almost everything in the compound,” Young explained. “They knew where the gasoline was, they knew where the generators were, they knew where the safe room was, they knew more than they should have about that compound.”

“An August 16 classified cable, reviewed and reported on by Fox News last fall, showed there was an emergency meeting in Benghazi less than a month before the attack due to rapidly deteriorating security.  The cable warned the office of Secretary of State  Hillary Clinton, and other State Department leaders in Washington, that the consulate could not sustain a coordinated assault.

The cable also reflected a grave concern among officials on the ground that the Libyan militia charged with protecting the consulate had been compromised, perhaps even infiltrated by extremists.”

And Obama’s White House and Hillary’s State Dept ignored these warnings. These deaths would not have happened had they listened and installed some proper security.

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4. And Obama’s war on the military continues.

From Politico  “After a spate of news stories this summer citing tensions between President  Barack Obama and his top military commanders over the possibility of U.S.  intervention in Syria, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough hastened to  assure the Washington Post that everything was, in fact, copacetic: The  president “appreciates” candid military advice “above all else,” McDonough insisted, and has “close, and in some instances warm,  relationships with his military chiefs,” as the Post put it. During my  own time at the Pentagon, where I worked as an Obama appointee from the spring  of 2009 until mid-2011, few seemed to hold this view. I recall asking one  general, recently back from Afghanistan, if he’d shared his experiences and  insights with the president. Rolling his eyes, he told me grimly that the White  House preferred the military to be seen but not heard.

Curious about whether things had changed since then, I asked a dozen serving  and recently retired senior military officers with high-level White House   access, many of whom were not comfortable speaking on the record, if they knew  of any military leaders with whom the president had a close and warm personal  relationship. In every case, the initial response was a long silence. “That’s a  great question,” said one retired senior officer, after a lengthy pause. “Good  question. I don’t know,” said a second. “I don’t think he’s close to anyone,”  commented a third. He just doesn’t seem to have any interest in “getting to  know” the military, a retired general concluded.”

Why would he? They have nothing in common. Their views are quite the opposite of his.

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by

News/Politics 10-16-13

What’s interesting in the news today?

First up today, some interesting words from Rand Paul. I’ll be honest, my first thought was I wonder what Dad thinks?

From CNSNews  “Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said the mainstream media  try to ignore it but there is a “worldwide war on Christianity” being  waged by a “fanatical element of Islam,” and that U.S. policy towards  Syria has resulted in America now sending weapons to “Islamic rebels who  are allied with al-Qaida.”

“From Boston to Zanzibar, there’s a worldwide war on Christianity,”  said Senator Paul at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. on Oct.  12.  “Christians are being attacked around the world, but you won’t  hear much about it on the evening news because the answer’s not  convenient. It doesn’t fit the narrative we have been told about radical  Islam.

“The president tries to gloss over who’s attacking and killing  Christians,” said Paul.  “The media describes the killings as  ‘sectarian.’ But the truth is, a worldwide war on Christians is being  waged by a fanatical element of Islam.”

Meanwhile, the war on Christians in the military continues here at home.

Also From CNSNews  “After the Obama administration, for the second Sunday in a row, continued to prohibit approximately 50 Catholic  priests from saying Mass and administering other sacraments at U.S. military facilities around the world, Father Ray Leonard, who serves as the  Catholic chaplain at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in Georgia, filed suit Monday against the Department of Defense, Defense Secretary Chuck  Hagel, the Department of the Navy, and Navy Secretary Ray Mabus.

DOD is prohibiting Father Leonard and the other Catholic priests from administering the sacraments and providing other services to their congregations even though two weeks ago Congress passed, and President Barack Obama signed, a law that instructed DOD to maintain on the job and keep paying contract employees who were supporting the  troops.

DOD took this action because Hagel determined–after consulting with Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department–that civilian Catholic priests, working under contract as chaplains, did not, among other  things, “contribute to the morale” and “well-being” of service  personnel.”

Shocked? Me neither. After all, they’re more likely to support the people in the first link than they are Christians anywhere.

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In other news from the continuing shut down saga….

From TheWashingtonPost  “The Republican-controlled House canceled a vote Tuesday night on a plan to reopen the federal government and raise the debt ceiling after support from conservatives for the deal crumbled, leaving Washington without a clear path forward for avoiding a first-ever default on the nation’s debt.

Later Tuesday night, Senate leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell moved to pick up the pieces of the shattered House effort, with aides to both senators expressing optimism a deal could be soon at hand.

“Senator Reid and Senator McConnell have re-engaged in negotiations and are optimistic that an agreement is within reach,” said Adam Jentleson, spokesman for Reid (D-Nev.).

“Given tonight’s events, the leaders have decided to work toward a solution that would reopen the government and prevent default. They are optimistic an agreement can be reached,” said Don Stewart, spokesman to McConnell (R-Ky.).”

I’d be more optimistic if McCain and Senate Republicans didn’t appear to be stuck in “Surrender Monkey” mode.

And the plot thickens as well. This should add a sense of urgency to the whole affair.

From CNBC  “Fitch Ratings put the US government’s “AAA” credit rating on ‘rating watch negative’ Tuesday, saying that the standstill on the U.S. debt ceiling negotiations risks undermining the effectiveness of the country’s government and political institutions.

U.S. stock index futures fell.

“Although Fitch continues to believe that the debt ceiling will be raised soon, the political brinkmanship and reduced financing flexibility could increase the risk of a U.S. default,” the rating agency wrote in a statement.”

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Next up, only 6,964,000 to go. If you do the math, at this rate, no way they hit 7 million by their deadline, even if you go with the Mail’s 51 thousand instead of the 36 thousand here. And where will the money to fund it and keep it afloat come from without actual policyholders to pay for it?

From NationalReview  “Millward Brown Digital, a consultancy firm, released an analysis today estimating that only 36,000 people had signed up for insurance through the federal Obamacare exchange website.

According to Millward Brown Digital, there were 9.47 million unique visitors to healthcare.gov from the site’s launch on October 1 through October 5. Of those visitors, 1.3 million left the website for their state-run exchange and 3.72 million attempted to create an account on the site. Only 1.01 million successfully did so.”

“The analysis says that “Healthcare.gov was clearly unprepared to handle the huge spike in traffic witnessed on October 1st when it was visited by .9% (or 1 in 114) of everyone online in the U.S. This is roughly equivalent to the daily traffic on Target.com.”

Yeah…….. 🙄

Here’s more from the study, also not encouraging. 1 year delay? Sounds like 3 or 4 is more like it.

From TheWashingtonPost  “The number of visitors to the federal government’s HealthCare.gov Web site plummeted 88 percent between Oct. 1 and Oct. 13, according to a new analysis of America’s online use, while less than half of 1 percent of the site’s visitors successfully enrolled for health insurance the first week.”

“Based on a sample of two million users — or 1 percent of all online users in the U.S. — which Millward Brown Digital has permission to track, it suggests that the rush of traffic administration officials cited as the cause of the site’s problems trailed off within a matter of days.”

“And Aneesh Chopra, who served as the White House’s first-ever chief technology officer during President Obama’s first term, said the analysis actually captured the public’s sustained interest in signing up for health insurance on the federal exchange. He noted that while the total number of visitors to the site is interesting, it matters much more that one million Americans created an online account.

“Account creation is always the holy grail. That’s the moment that matters,” Chopra said in an interview. “In one week, a million people began a process that will result in affordable coverage. That means a lot of people are going to ultimately get the product.”

Not surprised the former Obama admin employee tries to put a good spin on things. But the reality is he’s wrong. His “Holy Grail” is useless. It means nothing. What it needs are paying customers. Signing up is easy, forking over the cash for an actual policy is quite another matter. That isn’t happening in large enough numbers yet.

And Forbes says people will be shocked when they find out the cost. They say the system is designed to get all your info first, then you get to see the prices. They say that’s the case because the numbers will scare folks away.

From Forbes  “A growing consensus of IT experts, outside and inside the government, have figured out a principal reason why the website for Obamacare’s federally-sponsored insurance exchange is crashing. Healthcare.gov forces you to create an account and enter detailed personal information before you can start shopping. This, in turn, creates a massive traffic bottleneck, as the government verifies your information and decides whether or not you’re eligible for subsidies. HHS bureaucrats knew this would make the website run more slowly. But they were more afraid that letting people see the underlying cost of Obamacare’s insurance plans would scare people away.

HHS didn’t want users to see Obamacare’s true costs

“Healthcare.gov was initially going to include an option to browse before registering,” report Christopher Weaver and Louise Radnofsky in the Wall Street Journal. “But that tool was delayed, people familiar with the situation said.” Why was it delayed? “An HHS spokeswoman said the agency wanted to ensure that users were aware of their eligibility for subsidies that could help pay for coverage, before they started seeing the prices of policies.”

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And last one for today, was the difficulty with the SNAP program over the weekend really a computer glitch? Or a dry run to gauge reaction for this?

From WeaselZippers  “The United States Dept Of Agriculture is the governmental body tasked with overseeing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or “SNAP.”

According to a memo dated Oct 11 2013 and circulated among SNAP program administrators for all states that participate, the USDA recommends they begin withholding benefits from citizens beginning in November.

Is the US Dept of Agriculture trying to create panic among program participants as we saw previously?“

Is this the next move in the make it hurt campaign the Obama admin is engaging in?

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