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News/Politics 6-29-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread

1. The Resistance begins……

From TheChristianPost  “At a press conference in Memphis, Tennessee, members of the Coalition of African-American Pastors joined Christian ministers at the Church of God in Christ’s historic Mason Temple to warn the Obama administration to prepare for massive civil disobedience among pastors and clergy if state bans on gay marriage are deemed unconstitutional.

“If they rule for same-sex marriage, then we’re going to do the same thing we did for the civil rights movement,” said Rev. Bill Owens, president and founder of CAAP. “We will not obey an unjust law.”

“The politicians and courts have tried to take God out of this country,” continued Owens. “This country was founded on Godly principles. We will not stand back.”

Rev. David Welch, president of the Pastor’s Council in Houston, Texas, spoke out at the conference explaining the lengths people of faith might go to resist gay marriage.

“God created marriage between a man and woman and no Supreme Court jurisdiction can define this,” said Welch. “We stand clearly saying we will acknowledge God’s law no matter what the cost, no matter what the price. If they want to fill jails with pastors across the nation of every color, denomination and every size who will stand for the laws of God and His truths.””

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2. Texas isn’t having it. 

From TribuneNewsService/MSN  “Conservatives responded forcefully to the Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage, but nowhere more so than in Texas, which openly defied the ruling.

“No Texan is required by the Supreme Court’s decision to act contrary to his or her religious beliefs regarding marriage,” said Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.

Resistance to the ruling was deep-felt across the conservative spectrum and in many of the 14 states, including Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana, which have had laws forbidding same sex marriage. To opponents of gay marriage, religious liberty trumps the Supreme Court.

“No court can overturn natural law. Nature and Nature’s God, hailed by the signers of our Declaration of Independence as the very source of law, cannot be usurped by the edict of a court, even the United States Supreme Court,” said Frank Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.”

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More here, from TheStatesman  “County clerks can refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples based on religious objections to gay marriage, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Sunday.

Paxton noted that clerks who refuse to issue licenses can expect to be sued, but added that “numerous lawyers stand ready to assist clerks defending their religious beliefs,” in many cases without charge.

The formal opinion did not specify what constitutes a sincerely held religious belief, noting that “the strength of any such claim depends on the particular facts of each case.”

Paxton said Friday’s “flawed” opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned bans against same-sex marriage in Texas and other states, placed religious people in conflict between following their faith and the U.S. Constitution.

“Friday, the United States Supreme Court again ignored the text and spirit of the Constitution to manufacture a right that simply does not exist. In so doing, the court weakened itself and weakened the rule of law, but did nothing to weaken our resolve to protect religious liberty and return to democratic self-government in the face of judicial activists attempting to tell us how to live,” Paxton said.

Paxton’s opinion also noted that judges and justices of the peace can refuse to perform same-sex marriages.”

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3. The Democrats are gettin’ their crazy on. 

From Powerline  “The floodgates are open, and craziness is pouring out. The Democrats’ Confederate flag victory has them lusting for more. Hillary Clinton says South Carolina is only the beginning:

“It shouldn’t fly there. It shouldn’t fly anywhere,” Mrs. Clinton said of South Carolina….

In her discussion Tuesday with community leaders at Christ the King United Church of Christ in Florissant, Mo., Mrs. Clinton said the flag’s removal would be “just the beginning of what we have to do” to combat racism.

Of course it is. Everywhere, people preemptively abandoned the Stars and Bars. Alabama’s governor directed that it be taken down from that states’s capitol grounds. Amazon, Walmart, eBay and Sears all dropped the flag like a hot potato. Flag manufacturers terminated their Stars and Bars products. One leftist wrote Pope Francis to request that he denounce the use of St. Andrew’s Cross on the Confederate flag:

Doesn’t the fact that Saint Andrew’s cross appears on this evil symbol serve as an insult to the Catholic church which you lead?

But of course, it’s not just the flag. Shouldn’t every reminder of the Confederacy be eradicated? The New York Times headlines: “Calls to Drop Confederate Emblems Spread Nationwide.””

“It isn’t just the states who are participating in this historical cleansing:

Democratic Senators are reviewing the inventory of 100 statues and a few flags in the U.S. Capitol to identify and remove anything representing the Confederacy, in the wake of the Charleston, S.C. shootings in an historic black church.”

Some Democrats even want to dig up the dead over it. 

From FoxNewsRadio  “Memphis Mayor A.C. Wharton wants to dig up the bodies of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife and remove them from a city park in the latest and perhaps most despicable example of the anti-Southern cleansing spreading across the nation.

“Which African-American wants to have a picnic in the shadow of Nathan Bedford Forrest?” Wharton said in a Thursday press briefing.

In addition to desecrating the graves, Wharton wants to tear down a massive statue honoring the Confederate general who was involved in organizing the Ku Klux Klan. The bodies of Forrest and his wife would be relocated to a cemetery.

Memphis city officials have been waging a fierce and unrelenting war on southern heritage.  In 2013, the city council changed the name of Forrest Park to Health Sciences Park. They also changed the names of Jefferson Davis Park and Confederate Park.

So now they want to disinter the dead? What in God’s name is wrong with the mayor? What kind of sick, twisted person wants to dig up dead people?“

No word yet on how they plan on getting around the Tennessee’s Landmark Protections Act of 2013, which prohibits exactly what he’s proposing. But hey, when have Democrats ever let the law stop them?

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4. How republics die. 

From PJMedia  “Eight hundred years and 11 days after the stamping of the Magna Carta, it’s been an appalling week at the Supreme Court for the Constitution and the rule of law. Today’s ruling is, in a sense, the Roe v. Wade of our generation. And I would think that even if I were gay and wanted to marry.

As I noted on Twitter yesterday, it is entirely possible to like the outcome of a court ruling (or legislation) while being appalled at the process by which it was achieved. For instance, one can be both pro-choice and still believe (as in factRuth Bader Ginsburg does) that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided.

But too many people (including, apparently and sadly, many of the justices themselves, perhaps even including the chief justice) think that the purpose of the Supreme Court is to give them things they like, like subsidies for health care, or the right to marry someone of the same sex. They care only about the results, and are utterly indifferent to the process (as we saw with the way the PPACA was passed). They believe that the ends, if sufficiently desirable,always justify the means. But the means matter.

If, as Chief Justice Roberts implied yesterday, ambiguous laws can  be changed by judges per their divination of legislative intent, then there is no law except what the judges think it is. (I would note that in fact his reasoning was fundamentally flawed by his statement that it was Congress’s goal to simply “improve insurance markets.” I think their intent was to increase their control over our health providers, and ultimately lead us down a path to single payer. But neither of us knows.) This was not judicial activism — it was judicial nihilism.

Similarly, if the Fourteenth Amendment contains a hitherto unknown right to marry someone of the same sex, then it contains multitudes of rights that will be discovered in the future by more “enlightened” judges.”

“When we ignore and side step the Constitutional and legal process to achieve a desired end, the bedrock starts to turn to sand. When the laws are ignored by those who have sworn to uphold or review them, the rule of law itself disintegrates. When the public doesn’t care, or understand the role of the branches of government, but votes anyway for people who tell them they’ll just give them stuff they like, that is how republics are lost.”

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by

News/Politics 10-6-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. How Ebola spread out of control.

From TheWashingtonPost  “Frieden, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), knew it was no simple matter to properly carry away a body loaded with Ebola virus. It takes four people wearing protective suits, one at each corner of the body bag. On that grim day near the end of August, in a makeshift Ebola ward in Monrovia, Liberia, burial teams already had lugged 60 victims to a truck for the trip to the crematorium.

Frieden had seen plenty of death over the years, but this was far worse than he expected, a plague on a medieval scale. “A scene out of Dante,” he called it.

Shaken, he flew back to the United States on Aug. 31 and immediately briefed President Obama by phone. The window to act was closing, he told the president in the 15-minute call.

That conversation, nearly six months after the World Health Organization (WHO) learned of an Ebola outbreak in West Africa, was part of a mounting realization among world leaders that the battle against the virus was being lost. As of early September, with more than 1,800 confirmed Ebola deaths in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, there was still no coordinated global response. Alarmed U.S. officials realized they would need to call in the military.

 Obama eventually ordered 3,000 military personnel to West Africa; about 200 had arrived by the beginning of this month. They will be joined by health workers from countries such as Britain, China and Cuba. Canada and Japan are sending protective gear and mobile laboratories. Nonprofit organizations such as the Gates Foundation also are contributing. But it’s not at all clear that this belated muscular response will be enough to quell the epidemic before it takes tens of thousands of lives.”

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2. The Dallas hospital is blaming a flaw in the new electronic medical records for errors involving patient zero.

From CNSNews  “When a sick Liberian man walked into Texas Presbyterian Hospital last month, “Protocols were followed by both the physician and the nurses,” the hospital said in a statement released Thursday night.

The man told a nurse he had come from West Africa, where an Ebola epidemic is raging.

“However, we have identified a flaw in the way the physician and nursing portions of our electronic health records (EHR) interacted in this specific case.”

The hospital said its electronic health records include “separate physician and nursing workflows.” The hospital said the Liberian man’s travel history was located in the nurses’ portion of the EHR, but — “As designed, the travel history would not automatically appear in the physician’s standard workflow.”

“As result of this discovery, Texas Health Dallas has relocated the travel history documentation to a portion of the EHR that is part of both workflows. It also has been modified to specifically reference Ebola-endemic regions in Africa.”

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3. Yes please!

From TheWashingtonTimes  “Attorney General Eric Holder should be held in contempt of court for refusing to release “Fast and Furious” documents in line with a judge’s order — and even given jail time if necessary, lawmakers said.

Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee requested U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson to fine Mr. Holder if he doesn’t comply with her own order issued back in August — the one where she said he couldn’t claim executive privilege to keep private certain documents related to the federal gun-running program, “Operation Fast and Furious,” Politico reported.

Mr. Holder was supposed to turn over the documents by Oct. 1. The attorney general has not — but instead, announced his resignation from office.

Lawyers for the lawmakers say the time has come when the judge should consider imposing fines on Mr. Holder, or even throwing him in jail.

“Should the Court determine that the Attorney General has violated that Order, the Court should impose on the Attorney General an appropriate penalty to coerce his compliance with the August 20 Order, including an escalating daily monetary fine against Eric H. Holder Jr., to be paid by Mr. Holder out of his personal assets, converting to incarceration if the payment of daily monetary fines does not produce compliance within a reasonable period of time,” House Counsel Kerry Kircher and other lawyers wrote in the filing, Politico reported.”

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4. Kick ineligible illegal immigrants off the exchange, get sued for violating their supposed rights. Don’t worry, I’m sure the DoJ has a settlement plan already in the pipeline.

From TheDailyCaller  “Two immigration groups have filed legal complaints against the Obama administration for kicking over one hundred thousand Obamacare customers off their insurance plans without sending notices in their native language, Modern Healthcare reports.

The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) and Philadelphia’s Southeast Asian Mutual Assistance Associations Coalition (SEAMACC) have both filed complaints with Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights. The groups believe the Obama administration’s move to end the health plans of customers who failed to prove their legal immigration or citizenship status violate customers’ rights as immigrants.

The Obama administration terminated 115,000 customers’ Obamacare exchange health insurance on September 30, after customers failed to submit required documentation to prove their legal status in the U.S. 

The administration said it first reached out to each customer between eight and ten times through mail, phone and e-mail in an attempt to get them to update their documents on HealthCare.gov before finally kicking them off their plans.”

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5. The real war on women.

From CNSNews  “A record 55,553,000 women 16 years and older did not participate in the labor force in September, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This means that 55,553,000 women in the United States did not have a job and did not actively seek one in the past four weeks.

The number of women not in the labor force increased from 55,345,000 in August to 55,553,000 in September, an increase of 208,000.

The participation rate for women also dipped in September to 56.7 percent; it has not been this low since September of 1988 when it was 56.6 percent. This means that only 56.7 percent of women participated in the labor force by either having a job during the month or actively seeking one.”

But thanks to the Obama admin’s fuzzy math, the unemployment rate for women dropped anyway.

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6. Some good news.

From MSN  “Nearly two-thirds of the abortion clinics remaining in Texas must close immediately after a federal appeals court ruled Thursday that the state may enforce a law that requires those facilities to be built to the same standards as hospitals.

That law — part of an omnibus bill with several measures that chip away at women’s access to abortion — was struck down in late August as unconstitutional by an Austin federal judge, who put it on hold while the state appeals.

But on Thursday, a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans tossed out U.S. District Court Judge Lee Yeakel’s August injunction, which allowed the estimated 20 abortion clinics in Texas to continue operating during the appeals process. Without that injunction, only seven clinics will be left.

In its ruling, the 5th Circuit said the “central” question it considered was “whether the state has shown a likelihood of success” in fighting Yeakel’s ruling “regarding whether the ambulatory surgical center provision is unconstitutional. We conclude that it has.”

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which sued the state on behalf of a coalition of abortion clinics, said that Thursday’s decision will force nearly 1 million Texas women of reproductive age to drive a minimum of 300 miles round trip “to access their constitutional right to an abortion.”

Oh, the horror…. 🙄

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by

News/Politics 9-7-13

What’s interesting in the news today?

We’ll start out today with a good news story.

From WCHSTV  “A just-released 911 call reveals the dramatic moment when two Dallas-area teens were able to help save a woman who had allegedly been kidnapped after they saw her mouth the words “help me” from the back of a moving vehicle.

ABC News reported that Charles Atkins Lewis, 37, was arrested Aug. 22 after allegedly kidnapping the woman, 25, who has not been identified, at gunpoint and forcing her into his car in downtown Dallas. The two teenagers noticed the woman from their car as Lewis allegedly drove her through Kaufman County, according to the recording.”

“Police arrested Lewis and he has been charged him with aggravated kidnapping. He remains in jail on $50,000 bond and it’s unclear whether he has a lawyer.”

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Then some bad news outta Texas too. The next 2 are related stories.

From TheBlaze  “San Antonio’s leaders on Thursday approved anti-bias protections for gay and transgender residents, over the disapproval of top Texas Republicans and religious conservatives who packed a City Council hearing and occasionally shamed supporters for comparing the issue to the civil rights movement.

The 8-3 City Council vote in favor of the ordinance was a victory for gay rights advocates and for Democratic Mayor Julian Castro, a top surrogate of President Barack Obama. Castro has called the ordinance overdue in the nation’s seventh-largest city, where there is a stronger current of traditionalism and conservatism than other major Texas cities that already have similar gay rights protections.”

““The problem I have is that you criminalize us if we speak our faith,” said Marc Longoria, 42, a pastor at My Father’s House Church. “We are Christians all the time. We don’t have an on and off switch.””

Here’s the original story again that I linked to a couple of weeks back.

From OneNewsNow 

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Some Democrat Senators are proposing an alternative plan for Syria. Or it’s just a “Peace in our Time” type moment.

From TheHill  “Two Senate Democrats are circulating an alternative resolution on military  intervention in Syria that would give President Bashar Assad’s regime a 45-day  window to avoid a strike if it signs a chemical weapons ban.”

“In addition to the ultimatum presented to Assad, the resolution would also  require the president to present a “long term strategy” on Syria to prevent the  use of chemical weapons.”

““The failure by the government of Bashar al-Assad to sign and comply with the  [Chemical Weapons] Convention clearly demonstrates a disregard of international  norms on the use of chemical weapons. If the Government of Syria does not sign  the Convention within 45 after the date of the enactment of this resolution, all  elements of national power will be considered by the United States government,”  read a draft obtained by The Washington Post.”

And it looks like maybe the President just found his out. Let’s hope he takes it.

From TheDailyCaller  “President Barack Obama hinted Friday that he might not strike Syria if Congress rejects his authorization request.

“I’m not itching for military action… and if there are good ideas that are worth pursuing, then I’m going to be open to them,” he told one reporter who asked if he was seeking alternatives to a missile strike.”

“Some in Congress have suggested giving the Syrian regime 45 days to sign the  Chemical Weapons Convention, get rid of its chemical stockpiles, do something  that would enhance the international sense of accountability for Syria, but  delay military action,” the reporter asked.

“I am listening to all these ideas, and some of them are constructive,” he said.”

Face, saved.

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Attention is being drawn to just who it is the Obama admin is taking advice on Syria from. That undue influence from radical Muslim groups thing the admin is known for. Again.

From HuffPo  “A Wall Street Journal op-ed cited this week by both Secretary of State John Kerry and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has drawn scrutiny for not disclosing writer Elizabeth O’Bagy’s ties to a Syrian rebel advocacy group.

On Thursday, The Daily Caller examined O’Bagy’s role as political director for the Syria Emergency Task Force, a group that has lobbied the White House and Congress to support the rebels. O’Bagy told The Daily Caller that she is not a salaried employee, but serves as a paid contractor.

Journalist Laura Rozen questioned Friday why the Journal op-ed — which was published a week ago online and in Saturday’s print edition — did not identify O’Bagy’s affiliation with the group.”

It also explains why McCain is so far out there on the matter, and is adamant about aiding the rebels.

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Others in the Democrat ranks are happy for the distraction Syria is providing.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “White House plans for a health care messaging blitz ahead of Obamacare’s rollout have been overshadowed by the president’s call to strike Syria, distracting the administration from its plan to focus attention on a litany of domestic issues.

Obamacare was supposed to get its time in the limelight over these next few weeks, ahead of October’s open enrollment launch for the healthcare law’s insurance exchanges.”

“Some Democrats, however, downplayed the lack of attention on the health law.

“Politically speaking, it’s not the worst thing,” a veteran Democratic strategist, given anonymity to speak candidly about Obamacare, said. “Recently, the focus on health care has done more harm than good. I’m highly skeptical that a new PR blitz, even from the likes of President Clinton, will do much.”

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We have a new record number of Americans no longer in the work force, so the unemployment rate is down again.

From CNSNews  “The number of Americans who are 16 years or older and who have decided not to participate in the nation’s labor force has pushed past 90,000,000 for the first time, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The BLS counts a person as participating in the labor force if they are 16 years or older and either have a job or have actively sought a job in the last four weeks. A person is not participating in the labor force if they are 16 or older and have not sought a job in the last four weeks.

In July, according to BLS, 89,957,000 Americans did not participate in the labor force. In August, that climbed to 90,473,000–a one month increase of 516,000.”

The number was 80 million when Obama took office. 10 million more now, and that’s how you drop the UC rate. But is it a recovery? No.

From MSNMoney  “Payrolls in the U.S. climbed less than projected in August after smaller gains the prior two months, indicating companies are being deliberate in their hiring as they wait for a pickup in demand. The unemployment rate unexpectedly fell as more people left the labor force.

 The gain of 169,000 workers last month followed a revised 104,000 rise in July that was smaller than initially estimated, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The median forecast of 96 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for an August increase of 180,000. Unemployment dropped to 7.3 percent, the lowest since December 2008.

 The weaker data come as Federal Reserve officials, who meet Sept. 17-18, are debating whether the expansion and job market have improved enough to warrant trimming monthly bond purchases. While some companies are awaiting a pickup in sales before adding to staff, Ford Motor Co. (F) is among those putting more workers on assembly lines as the auto industry surges.”

And the actual job gains are always lowered on revision, and this will be too.

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