Sunday, November 8, 2015

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Cruz, Huckabee, Jindal preach conservative principles


Passionately professing that the Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex marriage must be overturned and laying out their conservative credentials, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal pulpiteered to over 1,700 conservative Christians in Des Moines, Iowa, Friday for a two-day National Religious Liberties Conference.
Before hearing from the presidential contenders, evangelical families collected name tags, perused a table filled with books like "What does the Bible Say About That: A Biblical Worldview Curriculum for Children" and connected with other like-minded conservatives. In the dimly lit hall, Kevin Sawnson, executive director of Generations, which was hosting the event, set the tone in describing same-sex marriage as a "significant cosmic revolution against almighty God."
"Some of our leaders are encouraging civil disobedience. Some of the most significant religious leaders in this country are looking you straight in the eye, and they are telling you, you disobey the Supreme Court of the United States in favor of the supreme law-giver of all this universe, and that is God. Well, friends, this is a wake-up call from the church," Swanson said. "I believe God is telling you are going to be persecuted. Either you are going stand with me or you are coming down with the rest of them."
When Cruz took the stage, he didn't hesitate in diving into how religion and government should be connected.
"Any president that doesn't start the day on his knees isn't fit to be commander in chief," Cruz passionately said.
Jindal pushed forth a similar message -- ardently citing the need for a religious revival in the U.S. He started off his 10 minutes on stage saying that the left is trying to take away First Amendment religious liberty rights. For this reason, Jindal told the room that 2016 will be "the most important election of our lifetime" and moved on to tout his own conservative record.
Huckabee, also diving head on into the social issues, said that same-sex marriage "is not law." He then moved quickly onto abortion, citing one prime question that has yet to be resolved: "Is the unborn child a person? Or just a blob of tissue?" From there, he pressed Republicans to force the left to defend themselves on what he called the right to kill a baby.
But for many in attendance, it was not so much the candidates that they were there to see -- it was, rather, the conference's doctrine that they were there to support.
Asked if a few young men sporting red Cruz stickers were there to see the senator, Johan Gervais, a 25-year-old from Texas, said, "Well, we are here for the religious liberty conference." He had driven to the conference with seven of his evangelical friends and happily noted that Cruz is their senator.
But Cruz was a favorite in the room. "We like him," said Graham Featherston, one of Gervais' fellow roadtrippers from Austin. Featherston is only 15 but said that if he could vote he would vote for Cruz. The group drove over 14 hours to attend the conference and knew a group of four girls who had also made the trek.
Generations, the conference's host, is based in Colorado Springs and decided to host the conference in Iowa because this is its first political convention. It seemed "pivotal" to be in the state that first voices its opinion in the primary process, said one person who works at Generations.
That said, out-of-towners were not an anomaly. Of the 1,700 attendees, only 387 were from Iowa.
Etsu Van Slooten, from Wisconsin, was there with her five children and her husband. Born in Japan, she went to college in the U.S. to study social work and immediately started working at Head Start, the federal program that promotes early childhood education for low-income families. But she soon realized that she needed to change her professions and devote herself more ardently to religion.
"I felt like I was helping people go to hell," Van Slooten said. "I wanted to work for something that makes a difference for a human being. So I went back to mission work for something that would give light."
Pushing her stroller, Van Slooten said that she, like many others at the conference, was a homeschooler.
Rafael Cruz, Ted Cruz's father, took to the stage later in the evening for about an hour and made a pitch to the homeschooling families in the room, telling them that the government does not want parents helping kids with their homework because it brainwashes them.
Talking to reporters after his speech, the younger Cruz specifically addressed the relationship between him and his father, an immigrant from Cuba who he considers his hero.
"He is someone who I have admired my entire life because he knows what he believes and he stands up and tells the truth," Cruz said. "What a blessing to be a child of an immigrant who fled oppression. It makes you realize just how precious and fragile liberty is."
Huckabee said religious liberty should be applied to all religious perspectives.
"We should protect the rights of an atheist, to believe that there is no God, as much as we should protect the rights that I have to believe that Jesus Christ is God," Huckabee told reporters.
Cruz and his father pressed home the need for voting momentum and action, urging people to get out and vote.
"If another 10 million evangelical Christians vote in 2016 and simply vote our values, we won't be up at 3 in the morning wondering what happened in Ohio and Florida," Cruz said. "They'll call the election at 8:35 p.m. because Christians would have turned this country around."
His father also urgently pressed evangelicals to get to the polls in order to fight back against "Christians being singled out."
"God didn't put Obama in power. We did! By sitting on our rear ends," the elder Cruz said. "Make sure everyone understands that voting is our civic responsibility."
Before leaving the stage, after almost an hourlong speech, he made the pitch that his son was the best choice. He described him as a leader, a fighter and the "man of the hour."
"Rafael for vice president!" an audience member shrieked as he walked off the stage.

Pentagon to release Guantanamo detainee relocation plan, as Obama pressed ahead with closure


The Pentagon is expected to release a plan next week on President Obama’s years-long effort to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center that suggests a Colorado prison dubbed “the Alcatraz of the Rockies” as one suitable site to relocate expected life-long detainees, Obama administration officials say.
Obama made a campaign promise in his 2008 White House bid to close the facility, arguing the move would be in the United States’ best financial, national security and foreign policy interests and in the name of justice -- considering some of the detainees have been held for nearly nine years without trial or sentencing.
However, critics of the promise, including many Republicans, fear transferring detainees to the U.S. mainland as part of an overall closure plan poses too much of a homeland security risk. They also say the president has yet to submit a closure plan and have been critical of the administration recently allowing some known terrorists to return to the Middle East.
The Florence, Colo., prison is among seven U.S. facilities in Colorado, Kansas and South Carolina being considered.
The Pentagon plan represents a last-gasp effort by the administration to convince staunch opponents in Congress that dangerous detainees who can't be transferred safely to other countries should be housed in a U.S.-based prison.
The United States opened the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks to get suspected terrorists off the battlefield.
Congressional Republicans have been able to stop Obama from closing the facility by imposing financial and other restrictions.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said this week that the administration is trying “very hard” to transfer 53 more detainees, among the 112 remaining, before the end of the year.
The rest are either facing trial by military commission or the government has determined that they are too dangerous to release but are not facing charges.
Any decision to select a U.S. facility would require congressional approval -- something U.S. lawmakers say is unlikely. However, Earnest also suggested that Obama has not ruled out the possibility of using an executive order to close the facility.
The Pentagon plan makes no recommendations on which of the seven sites is preferred and provides no rankings, according to administration officials.
A Pentagon assessment team reviewed the sites in recent months and detailed their advantages and disadvantages. They include locations, costs for renovations and construction, the ability to house troops and hold military commission hearings, and health care facilities.
Colorado's Centennial Correctional Facility has advantages that could outweigh its disadvantages, according to officials. But no details were available and no conclusions have been reached. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The Florence, Colo., facility already holds convicted terrorists, including Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and Zacarias Moussaoui, one of the conspirators of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
To approve a transfer, Defense Secretary Ash Carter must conclude that the detainees will not return to terrorism or the battlefield upon release and that there is a host country willing to take them and guarantee they will secure them.
Arizona Sen. John McCain is among the congressional Republicans who have asked for an administration plan for the shutdown of Guantanamo. And the Pentagon's assessment team visits over the last few months were part of the effort to provide options for the relocation of Guantanamo detainees.
"I've asked for six and a half years for this administration to come forward with a plan -- a plan that we could implement in order to close Guantanamo. They have never come forward with one and it would have to be approved by Congress," McCain said this week.
The facilities reviewed by the assessment team were the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks and Midwest Joint Regional Corrections Facility at Leavenworth, Kansas; the Consolidated Naval Brig, Charleston, South Carolina; the Federal Correctional Complex, which includes the medium, maximum and supermax facilities in Florence, Colorado; and the Colorado State Penitentiary II in Canon City, Colorado, also known as the Centennial Correctional Facility.
Colorado Republican Sen. Cory Gardner made clear this week that he opposes any move to relocate detainees to his state.
"I will not sit idly by while the president uses political promises to imperil the people of Colorado by moving enemy combatants from Cuba, Guantanamo Bay, to my state of Colorado," he said at a Capitol Hill news conference.
He also expressed concerns about the potential impact of such a move on the state’s judicial system and concerns about detainees potentially have to transported from the rural facility to downtown Denver to the federal courthouse for a hearing.
McCain and others have said that an executive order to shutter Guantanamo would face fierce opposition, including efforts to reverse the decision through funding mechanisms.
The prison at Guantanamo presents a particularly confrontational replay of that strategy. Obama would likely have to argue that the restrictions imposed by Congress are unconstitutional, though he has abided by them for years. The dispute could set off a late-term legal battle with Republicans in Congress over executive power, potentially in the height of a presidential campaign.

Donald Trump Hosts ‘SNL,’ But Larry David Wins the Bounty


Donald Trump elicited just the reaction you would expect from his “Saturday Night Live” hosting gig: Polarizing.
Reaction ranged widely on Twitter, from some saying the episode was a resurgence for the show this season, to others positing the sketches were so bad the writers must have been conspiring to sabotage Trump’s campaign.
One clear winner of the evening was Larry David, who not only returned to play Bernie Sanders but also stands to earn $5,000 for shouting that Trump was a racist while the presidential candidate was on stage. That moment was in itself a riff on one protest group’s offer of $5,000 to anyone who heckled Trump.
Shortly afterward, the political action committee that offered the money, Deport Racism, indicated that David would be in line to receive the reward.
Before the start of the show, hundreds of protesters marched from Trump headquarters to 30 Rockefeller Center, where the show is taped, and held signs such as “racismisntfunny” as well as effigies of the candidate. Many Latino groups, including the National Hispanic Media Coalition, called on NBC to drop Trump, as did the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
The Democratic National Committee released a statement before the show even began, saying that his appearance was “no laughing matter given his offensive rhetoric and the tone of his campaign.”
Trump wasn’t the first presidential candidate to host the show. Al Sharpton had the gig in 2003, as he was running for the Democratic nomination. George McGovern hosted in 1984, just after ending his presidential campaign that year.
Stuart Stevens, senior strategist for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and a screenwriter, tweeted, “Was any politician ever better off after SNL? I don’t get why they keep doing it?”

Carson says West Point story, others about his past are bias, amount to 'witch hunt'


Soft-spoken GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson on Friday lashed out at the news media for recent stories about his long-ago past, saying they are bias and amount to a “witch hunt.”
Carson, a retired pediatric neurosurgeon, has indeed faced intense media scrutiny over the past couple of weeks as he moves to the front of some national primary polls.
Over the past several days, Politico published a story questioning whether Carson, a first-time candidate, receiving a scholarship offer from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
And CNN reported finding no support for Carson's oft-repeated claim that he tried to stab a close friend as a teenager. Citing privacy concerns, his campaign has refused to name the person involved.
"I think what … these kinds of things show, is there is a desperation on behalf of some to try to find a way to tarnish me," Carson said Friday night during a news conference outside West Palm Beach, Fla.
He also said such efforts will only strengthen him among supporters, who “understand this is a witch hunt.”
In an intense exchanged with reporters during the news conference, Carson argued President Obama didn't receive the same level of scrutiny in his 2008 White House bid.
“In fact, I remember just the opposite,” he said.
Carson cited Obama’s relationships with Frank Marshall Davis, who had ties to the Communist Party, and Bill Ayers, a college professor who in the 1970s led the radical left group the Weather Underground.
He also asked reporters why they haven’t tried to unseal Obama’s under-graduate records.
“Why are you guys not interested in why his records are sealed?” Carson asked.
Carson has developed a passionate following based in part on his inspirational personal story and devotion to Christian values. The only African-American in the Republican 2016 class, he grew up in inner-city Detroit and often speaks about his childhood brushes with violence and poverty.
Following the Politico story that was published Friday, the Carson campaign sought to clarify the candidate’s story about his interest in attending West Point in his breakout book, "Gifted Hands," in which he outlines his participation with the Reserve Officers' Training Corps, commonly known as ROTC, while in high school.
"I was offered a full scholarship to West Point," Carson wrote in the 1996 book. "I didn't refuse the scholarship outright, but I let them know that a military career wasn't where I saw myself going. As overjoyed as I felt to be offered such a scholarship, I wasn't really tempted."
Campaign spokesman Doug Watts said Carson was "the top ROTC student in the city of Detroit" and "was introduced to folks from West Point by his ROTC supervisors."
"They told him they could help him get an appointment based on his grades and performance in ROTC. He considered it, but in the end did not seek admission," Watts said.
Students who are granted admission to West Point are not awarded scholarships. Instead, they are said to earn appointments to the military academy, which come with tuition, room and board and expenses paid, in exchange for five years of service in the Army after graduation.
A West Point spokesman on Friday said the academy "cannot confirm whether anyone during that time period was nominated to West Point if they chose not to pursue completion of the application process."
At the Friday news conference, Carson said, "It was an offer to me. It was specifically made." He said he could not recall specifically who made the offer. "It's almost 50 years ago. I bet you don't remember all the people you talked to 50 years ago," he said.
Pressed further by reporters, Carson said: "What about the West Point thing is false? What is false about it?" Asking if he had made a mistake in recounting the story, he said, "I don't think so. I think it is perfectly clear. I think there are people who want to make it into a mistake. I'm not going to say it is a mistake, so forget about it."
Hours earlier, Carson had told Fox News in an interview, "I guess it could have been more clarified. I told it as I understood it."
In a post Wednesday on his Facebook page, Carson wrote that "every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no elected office experience." About half had been elected members of colonial assemblies, and Watts acknowledged the error to The Washington Post.
On another topic, Carson has said the great pyramids of Egypt were built by the biblical figure Joseph to store grain, although the accepted science says that they were tombs for pharaohs.

Trump takes center stage on 'Saturday Night Live'


Donald Trump returned to “Saturday Night Live” this weekend to poke fun at his persona and take another swipe at longtime nemesis Rosie O’Donnell.
“She said some things about me that were hurtful and untrue,” he jabbed in the show’s opening monologue.  “I said some things about her that were mean, but completely accurate.”
Trump — only the second active presidential candidate to host the sketch comedy series (Rev. Al Sharpton was first in 2003) — was greeted with rousing applause inside Studio 8H.
“People think I am controversial, but the truth is, I am nice guy,” he told the crowd.
The outspoken billionaire kicked off the show by appearing side-by-side with two of his most famous dopplegangers, Taran Killam and Darrell Hammond. ”They don't have my talent, my money or especially my good looks,” he quipped.
But the evening’s best line came from “Seinfeld” creator Larry David, who yelled out “You’re a racist” from off-camera.
When Trump, feigning surprise, asked what was going on, David cracked, "I heard if I yelled that, they'd give me five thousand dollars."
Prior to the broadcast, several hundred protesters congregated outside NBC Studios at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, hoping to convince the network to keep the real estate mogul off its airwaves.
Los Angeles-based activist Luke Montgomery even promised to compensate anyone who disrupted the live telecast.
Trump — one of the leaders for the GOP nomination — appeared in more than half of the evening’s sketches, including a fake 2018 cabinet meeting in which ISIS has been defeated, “Apprentice” villain Omorosa is Secretary of State and the Mexican president arrives with a check to pay for the wall at the U.S. border.
In 40 seasons, only eight politicians have been tapped to host “SNL.”  Trump first hosted the show back in 2004, before he sought public office.
The show draws much of it comedy from politics and has become a popular stop for candidates looking to show a less business-like side of their personalities.
Hillary Clinton attempted to soften her image by turning up as “Val the bartender” in a skit on the program’s season premiere episode in October.
Sarah Palin’s visit in 2008, in which she appeared opposite look-alike (and former-cast member) Tina Fey, drew a record 17 million views.
Trump’s appearance is expected to register even higher when overnight ratings are released later Sunday.

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