Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Denver Broncos WR Demaryius Thomas' mother's drug trafficking sentence commuted by Obama
Double Standards at work here?
Demaryius Thomas received some good news Monday and it had nothing to do with his contract stalemate with the Denver Broncos: his mother is getting out of prison early.
President Barack Obama cut the prison sentences of 46 non-violent drug offenders, and one of them was Katina Smith, who has been incarcerated in Georgia since 2000.
She and her mother, Minnie Pearl Thomas, were arrested on drug trafficking charges in 1999 when Thomas was 11 years old.
Smith was scheduled to be released in 2017. Now, she'll be released on Nov. 10.
Smith had declined to testify against her mother in exchange for a reduced sentence. Her mother received a life sentence as a multiple offender.
After his mother and grandmother were jailed, Thomas went to live with an uncle and aunt. Also helping to raise him was their oldest daughter, Angela Spencer, now 37.
"We are very happy that she is going to be free. It's time for her to be a part of Demaryius' life," Spencer said. "No matter how your situation goes in life, everybody needs their mother. It's time for her to be out from behind bars and into his life."
Denver's star receiver and the Broncos have until Wednesday to work out a long-term contract or Thomas will play this season on a $12.82 million franchise tag.
Thomas skipped all of the Broncos' offseason workouts to the chagrin of general manager John Elway, who said he wanted Thomas to work out with the team so he could adjust to new coach Gary Kubiak's offense.
Quarterback Peyton Manning said last month that he wished Thomas had been in Denver for offseason workouts, too, but also wanted his top target to get what he deserves in a new contract.
Atlanta NAACP chapter calls for removal of massive Confederate sculpture in public park (Nazism at Work?)
A sculpture in Georgia larger than a football field – depicting Civil War luminaries Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson – has become the latest target in the push to purge the South of signs of the Confederacy.
The Atlanta chapter of the NAACP called Monday for the elimination of all symbols of the Confederacy from Stone Mountain Park, whose marquee attraction is the 90-foot-high, 190-foot-wide sculpture carved deep into the mountain.
"Those guys need to go,” chapter leader Richard Rose told WSB-TV, referring to Davis, the former president of the Confederate States of America, and the two Confederate generals. “They can be sand-blasted off, or somebody could carefully remove a slab of that and auction it off to the highest bidder.
"My tax dollars should not be used to commemorate slavery,” he added.
In addition to the removal of Confederate symbols from Stone Mountain Park, located outside of Atlanta, the group says it also wants all symbols removed from state-owned buildings, parks and lands.
A spokesman for the park told WSB-TV that any removal of the monuments is up to the Georgia state legislature.
Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., who serves the district in which the mountain sits, told local radio station V-103 that he is “not so much affected by Stone Mountain Park as I am by the flag flying at an official government building like a state capitol or even the federal Capitol, a position, the seat of government.”
“I view Stone Mountain as more of a museum-type archaeological place of remembrance for those who want to remember back then and they have a right to remember back then and the park is there,” he said.
The push from the NAACP comes on the heels of the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the South Carolina state house. A June shooting at a black church in Charleston, S.C., that left 9 dead has sparked debates over the Confederate flag's place in the South. The alleged killer, Dylann Roof, was white and posted numerous photos online of himself with the rebel flag.
SHOCK VIDEO: Planned Parenthood sells dead baby body parts
The video is gruesome and appalling.
It purportedly shows a Planned Parenthood executive sipping a glass of wine in a Los Angeles restaurant while casually explaining how they sell body parts from aborted babies.
The undercover video was filmed in July 2014 by the Center for Medical Progress, an advocacy group that reports on medical ethics. They dispatched two actors posing as representatives of a human biologics company to a business lunch with Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services.
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The video shows Nucatola describing in graphic detail how abortionists are able to harvest organs from aborted babies based on the parts that are needed.
“Yesterday was the first time she said people wanted lungs,” she told the undercover buyers. “Some people want lower extremities, too, which, that’s simple. That’s easy. I don’t know what they’re doing with it, I guess if they want muscle.”
To which one of the fake buyer’s replied, “Yeah - a dime a dozen.”
“I’d say a lot of people want liver,” Nucatola said. “And for that reason, most providers will do this case under ultrasound guidance, so they’ll know where they’re putting their forceps.”
She went on to describe how they are able to acquire other organs without “crushing” them.
“We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”
Understand this – she is talking about an unborn baby, folks.
Planned Parenthood issued a statement denying they’ve done anything wrong and accused the Center for Medical Progress of releasing a heavily edited video.
“A well funded group established for the purpose of damaging Planned Parenthood’s mission and services has promoted a heavily edited, secretly recorded videotape that falsely portrays Planned Parenthood’s participation in tissue donation programs that support lifesaving scientific research,” said spokesman Eric Ferrero in a prepared statement.
Ferrero went on to acknowledge they help patients who want to donate tissue for scientific research and they do so will the full consent from patients “and under the highest ethical and legal standards.”
Planned Parenthood denied they made any money off the sale of aborted baby parts.
“There is no financial benefit for tissue donation for either the patient or for Planned Parenthood,” Ferrero said. “In some instances, actual costs, such as the cost to transport tissue to leading research centers, are reimbursed, which is standard across the medical field.”
David Daledien, lead the undercover project against Planned Parenthood – a nearly three-year-long investigation on illegal trafficking of aborted fetal parts.
“Planned Parenthood’s criminal conspiracy to make money off of aborted baby parts reaches to the very highest levels of their organization,” he said. “Elected officials must listen to the public outcry for Planned Parenthood to be held accountable to the law and for our tax dollars to stop underwriting this barbaric abortion business.”
The Center for Medical Progress offered a swift refutation to Planned Parenthood’s response – by posting the full and unedited video.
They also posted an advertisement from a major purchaser of aborted fetal tissue that was posted in Planned Parenthood clinics. That advertisement mentions words like “financial profitable,” “financial profits,” “financial benefit to your clinic,” and “fiscal growth of your own clinic.”
Planned Parenthood did not return calls seeking comment on those allegations.
Meanwhile, the outrage over the horrific video has spread like wildfire.
Dr. Russell Moore, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, summed it up in one word – speechless.
“If this does not shock the conscience, what will?” Moore wrote online. ‘It is not only that infants, in their mother’s wombs, are deprived of their lives, but also that their corpses are desecrated for profit.”
Think about that for a moment – desecrated unborn babies for profit.
“This is not only murderous; it is murderous in the most ghoulish way imaginable,” Moore added.
Moore is calling on Congress and the Department of Justice to investigate.
“For years, many of us have called on government leaders to see to it that no taxpayer funds, of any kind, go to Planned Parenthood,” Moore wrote. “Is it not clear that these are not health-care providers but pirates and grave-robbers of those who have no graves?”
La. Gov. Bobby Jindal has already called on the state’s Dept. of Health and Hospitals to conduct an investigation of what he called “this alleged evil and illegal activity.”
GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina posted a Facebook message calling the video tragic and outrageous.
“This isn’t about ‘choice’,” she wrote. “It’s about profiting on the death of the unborn while telling women it’s about empowerment.”
"Beyond disturbing," is what Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) tweeted.
I do not believe my words can match the eloquence of Dr. Moore’s. We ask God to bless America – a nation that turns a blind eye to the slaughter of unborn children – a nation that provides taxpayers to fund an organization that allegedly sells body parts from dead babies.
God bless America? Perhaps we should be asking for His mercy, instead.
Todd Starnes is host of Fox News & Commentary, heard on hundreds of radio stations. Sign up for his American Dispatch newsletter, be sure to join his Facebook page, and follow him on Twitter. His latest book is "God Less America.
Denver court rules against Little Sisters of the Poor contraception coverage case
A federal appeals court in Denver ruled on Tuesday against a group of Colorado nuns who challenged a provision in the Affordable Care Act that requires employers to provide insurance policies covering contraception.
Though religious groups are already exempt from covering contraceptives, the plaintiffs – the Little Sisters of the Poor as well as four Christian colleges in Oklahoma – argued the exemption doesn’t go far enough because they must sign away the coverage to another party, making them feel as though they had a hand in providing contraceptives.
The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed.
The court ruled that because the Little Sisters of the Poor had the option of signing a form that would transfer covering contraceptives to a third-party, they failed to show that the ObamaCare mandate placed a burden on their right to exercise freedom of religion.
Following the ruling, Sister Loraine Marie Maguire said “we simply cannot choose between our care for the elderly poor and our faith.”
Maguire added that forcing the Little Sister of the Poor to make that choice “violates our nation’s commitment to ensuring that people from diverse faiths can freely follow God’s calling in their lives.”
Mark Rienzi, senior counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and the lead attorney for the nuns, said there have been “untold millions of people” who have gotten contraceptives without involving nuns and that there was “no reason the government cannot run its programs without hijacking the Little Sisters and their health plan.”
"Although we recognize and respect the sincerity of plaintiffs' beliefs and arguments, we conclude the accommodation scheme ... does not substantially burden their religious exercise," the three-judge panel wrote.
The same court ruled last year that for-profit companies can join the exempted religious organizations and not provide the contraceptives. The U.S. Supreme Court later agreed with the 10th Circuit in the case brought by the Hobby Lobby arts-and-crafts chain.
The birth-control rule has been among the most divisive aspects of the health care overhaul. Some advocates for women praise the mandate, but some religious groups have decried it as an attack on religious freedom.
The Denver nuns run more than two dozen nursing homes for impoverished seniors.
Two years ago the U.S. Supreme Court offered the nuns a short-term reprieve on the exemption pending their appeal.
In addition to the Denver nuns, the law was challenged by Southern Nazarene University, Oklahoma Baptist University, Mid-America University and Oklahoma Wesleyan University. Also challenging the waiver process is a group called Reaching Souls International, an evangelist Oklahoma organization that does Christian mission work overseas.
The birth-control exemption was extended to other religious nonprofits while the case was being heard. Those included Wyoming Catholic College in Casper, Wyoming.
The three-judge panel included one judge who also ruled in the Hobby Lobby decision. The judges drew a distinction between the two cases, noting that the religious nonprofits have an exemption process that wasn't available to Hobby Lobby.
While Hobby Lobby faced the prospect of fines for not providing coverage, the judges noted, the nonprofits must only file for an exemption, making the burden less substantial.
The judges called the health law's accommodation for religious objectors adequate.
"The accommodation relieves plaintiffs from complying with the mandate and guarantees they will not have to provide, pay for, or facilitate contraceptive coverage," the judges wrote.
The group that brought the lawsuit on behalf of the nuns and religious schools, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said in a statement that it would appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"There is no reason the government cannot run its programs without hijacking the Little Sisters and their health plan," Becket Fund lawyer Mark Rienzi said in a statement.
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
Former Navy SEAL: Why I am no longer a Democrat
I am a conservative Republican, but I didn’t start out that way.
I was raised as a Democrat. I was taught that Harry Truman was the greatest president ever because he was strong, stood up to the communists, and most important, he was from Missouri. I was taught to stand up for the little guy, and that bigger government was the best way to do that. I registered to vote as a Democrat, and several years ago some Democrats even tried to recruit me to run for Congress.
There was one rather large problem. As I got older, I no longer believed in their ideas. Even worse, I had concluded that liberals aren’t just wrong. All too often they are world-class hypocrites. They talk a great game about helping the most vulnerable, with ideas that feel good and fashionable. The problem is their ideas don’t work, and often hurt the exact people they claim to help.
After four tours of duty as a Navy SEAL officer, I came home from Iraq and watched the VA – the second-biggest bureaucracy in the country – fail my friends. The VA was broken and my friends were suffering. And yet, time and again, the only “solution” I heard from liberals was to spend more money. It made me angry.
I became a conservative because I believe that caring for people means more than just spending taxpayer money; it means delivering results. It means respecting and challenging our citizens, telling them what they need to hear, not simply what they want to hear.It’s not that I doubted their intentions. But good intentions are easy. Even easier when you’re spending other people’s money. But they’re not enough. To actually achieve meaningful results, you have to have good ideas, discipline and accountability to go along with it. The problem is that most Democrats seem to think more money and bigger government are the solutions to virtually every single problem. They’re wrong.
It’s easy to give people food stamps; harder to get people into good-paying jobs. It’s easy to encourage dependency; harder to help people into a life of purpose and dignity. The worst are politicians who smugly talk about caring for the little guy, and then abandon the poorest, most vulnerable of our children to schools that give them little chance to succeed. That’s not just hypocrisy. It’s a tragedy.
I became a conservative because I believe that caring for people means more than just spending taxpayer money; it means delivering results. It means respecting and challenging our citizens, telling them what they need to hear, not simply what they want to hear.
I am not a career politician. I’ve never run for office, and I don’t pretend to have all the answers. In fact, the political world is still a very foreign place to me. But I believe Missouri is heading the wrong direction, and I don’t trust the career politicians who created this mess to fix it.
So what would I do? I believe in limited but effective government. I believe in replacing ObamaCare with something that actually works. I believe in putting working families and job creation ahead of special interests. I believe that in a free society we have to defend religious liberties and the 2nd Amendment, and protect innocent life, so everyone has the freedom to pursue happiness. I believe in reforming welfare, so every person can have a chance at a life of dignity, purpose, and meaning. And I believe America’s public schools should be the best in the world.
In other words, I believe we have a lot of work to do.
I was raised to stand up for the little guy, for working families and the middle class. I am committed to that principle today more than ever. And if I thought the Democratic Party had the right ideas to do that, I’d still be one of them. But they don’t. And if I trusted career politicians to fix the problems they created, I’d still be standing on the sidelines. But I don’t.
As Americans, we deserve much better than what we’re getting from our government. We don’t need more rhetoric. We want results. And that means changing politics as usual, which won’t be easy. But nothing worthwhile ever is. You have to fight for what you believe in, and I, for one, have never backed down from that kind of fight.
Clinton vows to raise taxes, reform Wall Street in effort to recapture progressive base
Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton on Monday took a giant step toward letting Democratic voters know she’s representing the progressive agenda, calling for tax increases and more regulation on Wall Street -- while making a play for a liberal base that has been gravitating toward Sen. Bernie Sanders.
“I know as much as anybody, the role Wall Street should play for main street,” said Clinton, who vowed, if elected, to “rein in excessive risks” and appoint regulators to “prosecute firms and individuals” who break the law.
Clinton also vowed to increase taxes on large corporations and the country’s highest wage-earners, an apparent effort to recapture her party’s progressive base now captivated by surging primary challenger Sanders and the reformer agenda of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is not a 2016 candidate.
Clinton specifically vowed to revive efforts to institute the so-called Buffet Rule, which is essentially a 30 percent “millionaire tax.”
“Those at the top have to pay their share,” Clinton said during her roughly 35-minute speech at the New School, a New York City college and bastion for progressive ideals. “Wealthy financiers pay artificially low tax rates.”
Clinton also called for minimum-wage increases and urged companies to expand profit-sharing of corporate earnings with workers.
“Hard-working Americans deserve to benefit from the record corporate earnings they helped produce," she said. "That will be good for workers and good for business. Studies show profit-sharing that gives everyone a stake in a company's success can boost productivity and put money directly into employees' pockets."
The speech was greeted warmly on the left.
“Clinton's economic policy speech reflects a very clear understanding that the Democratic Party and the vast majority of the American people want a president who will fight alongside … Warren and refuse to kowtow to wealthy and powerful interests on Wall Street,” said Jim Dean, chairman of Democracy for America.
"Coupled with Senator Bernie Sanders' early 2016 surge, today's speech illustrates the dominate force the Elizabeth Warren wing is in the Democratic Party and the critical role it has already played in ensuring that income inequality sits at the very center of the 2016 presidential debate."
While top-tier Republican candidate and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has called for an annual growth rate of 4 percent, Clinton asserted that the nation's economy should not be “tethered” to a specific growth figure but rather by how much income increases for middle-class households.
Clinton called out Bush by name. And in her pitch to revive labor unions and their influence on increasing wages, she cited Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, the latest GOP contender to enter the race, and suggested the entire Republican Party was trying to squash big labor.
“They made their name stomping workers’ rights,” Clinton said. “I will fight back against these mean-spirited attacks.”
Republican National Committee spokeswoman Allison Moore said in response that Clinton also should have explained how she plans to pay for all the spending.
"Whether she tells us or not, though, it’s pretty clear: she will have to raise taxes on American families," Moore said. "If she doesn’t raise taxes, then she will have to break her promises. That’s Clintonomics: tax hikes or broken promises."
Clinton also pointed to economic progress during her husband's two terms in the 1990s and more recently under President Obama.
In Clinton's approach to the economy, she says more Americans would share in the prosperity and avoid the boom-and-bust cycles of Wall Street that have led to economic turbulence of the past decade.
Clinton, who is seeking to become the nation's first female president, also addressed ways of making it easier for women to join the workforce -- including affordable child care and pay equal to their male counterparts
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