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Southern Baptists urged to reject any laws legalizing gay marriage

Prepare for civil disobedience.
That’s the message one prominent pastor is sending to some 16 million members of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Texas, said American Christians should be prepared for massive fallout if the Supreme Court legalizes same-sex unions.
“We want to stay in the system,” Graham told me in a telephone interview. “We want to work in the system. We want to support our government. We want to obey its laws.”
But.
“But there’s a coming a day, I believe, that many Christians personally and churches corporately will need to practice civil disobedience on this issue.”
The foundation for such a possibility was laid Wednesday morning in Columbus, Ohio where the current and former presidents of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination sent a strong message to the country.

What would it look like if 16 million Southern Baptists engaged in civil disobedience?

“We strongly encourage all Southern Baptist pastors, leaders, educators and churches to openly reject any mandated legal definition of marriage and to use their influence to affirm God’s design for life and relationships,” the statement declared.
While affirming their love for all people – regardless of sexual orientation, the former Southern Baptist presidents said the “cannot and will not affirm the moral acceptability of homosexual behavior or any behavior that deviates from God’s design for marriage.”
“Our first duty is to love and obey God, not man,” they emphatically stated.
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Graham, who was elected president in 2003 and 2004, was among those signing the statement. In all – some 35 years of Southern Baptist leadership was represented.
He told me Christians must be prepared for the aftermath of a court decision that legalizes gay marriage.
“Many people must be willing to count the cost on this,” he said.
So what would it look like if 16 million Southern Baptists engaged in civil disobedience?
“I hope we never live to find out what that looks like,” Graham told me. “There are many Christians today who are preparing if necessary to go to jail.”
I’ve known Pastor Graham for years and I’ve never known him to use hyperbole. His words and his predictions are sobering. And he hopes the Supreme Court and Washington, D.C. hear what Southern Baptists are saying.
“We want them to know our voices will be heard,” he declared.
The issue of same-sex marriage has already been addressed by attendees at the denomination’s annual meeting. Delegates, known as messengers, approved a resolution opposing gay marriage and Southern Baptist Convention President Ronnie Floyd delivering a fiery sermon vowing not to obey the court’s decision.
Graham said they are calling on Southern Baptist business owners and public sector workers to stand together as well – knowing full well they could lose their jobs and careers.
“We are concerned about Southern Baptist Christians in the marketplace – in the media and corporate world,” he said.
He related the story of a deacon in his church who politely declined participation in his company’s “diversity day.”
“He’s already been sent to human resources and he received a semi-threatening letter from the CEO,” Graham said. “It’s already happening – the punishment – the discrimination.”
Denominational leaders are warning churches and Christian schools to be prepared for potential lawsuits from LGBT activists as well as the threat of losing tax exempt status.
“The punch that is most deadly is the one you don’t see coming,” Graham said. “You need to see this coming. It’s coming your way. It’s coming to a town, a city, a university, a college, a church near you,” he said.

California budget deal to make state first in nation to offer health care to undocumented kids

 A budget deal between Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders would make California the first in the nation to offer state-subsidized health care to children who are in the country illegally.
The $115.4 billion agreement announced Tuesday is expected to win easy approval from the Senate and Assembly before the fiscal year begins July 1, and its immigrant health care provisions were touted by its backers as a necessity in the face of federal inaction.
"While Washington dithers because they can't get things done, we need immigration reform," Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles. "The reality is many of these children, and they are children, require some kind of health care and they receive it in the emergency room.
The cost to taxpayers would be $40 million in the new fiscal year and grow to $132 million a year once fully implemented, numbers that had Republicans objecting and warning that it won't help immigrants get access to doctors because of the shortage of providers who accept Medi-Cal, the state's health program for the poor.
Anti-immigration advocates said it was yet another move from Brown — like a bill providing driver's licenses that took effect this year — that is "extremely generous" toward people who enter the country illegally.
"Gov. Brown continues to sign laws that incentivize more illegal immigration," said Joe Guzzardi, spokesman for Californians for Population Stabilization. "I can't really see what reason there would be not to come to California. I can get a job, I can get tuition, I can now get medical care for my children."
But the California Immigrant Policy Center called the move a "ray of hope" for many in the state.
"California will take a key first step toward recognizing that health care truly is a human right," the group's Executive Director Reshma Shamasunder said in a statement.
The budget deal also sends billions of dollars more to public schools and universities, adds spaces for state-funded child care and preschool, and creates the state's first income tax credit for the working poor.
The revised spending plan is far closer to Brown's $115 billion proposal in May than the $117.5 billion version approved a day earlier by the Democratic-controlled Legislature. It adds $61 million in spending above his May plan.
"All in all, I think the people of California can be proud of the work that's been done," Brown said.
Brown also announced he is calling two special sessions to address how California pays for roads, highways and other infrastructure and Medi-Cal. There is a $5.7 billion annual backlog in road repairs, the administration said.
But Republicans warned that the special sessions could result in new taxes on gasoline, cigarettes and health care. "Given the $14 billion of unanticipated tax revenues the state has just received, it is difficult to understand why their starting point is to impose billions of dollars in additional taxes on hard-working Californians," said Senate Minority Leader Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar.
Legislative Democrats had sought to restore spending on a host of social welfare programs that were cut during the recession, and they pushed to expand support for the neediest in California as the state enjoys a surplus. Their proposed budget added $749 million in new spending.
Under the compromise announced Tuesday, Brown agreed to keep some of those programs such as boosting the number of state-subsidized child care slots, giving in-home support workers a raise, and expanding health coverage to children regardless of their legal status.
The governor said he was able to fund those programs without adding to state spending by finding savings in a variety of other programs, including fixing an accounting error in health spending.
Still, advocates who had pressured the Democratic governor to expand programs were disappointed. Brown rejected proposals to allow child care workers to unionize, kept a cap on welfare payments meant to discourage low-income women from having additional children, and rejected Medi-Cal payment increases to doctors and dentists.
"This budget doesn't do anything to stop punishing poor children," said Mike Herald, legislative advocate with the Western Center on Law and Poverty.

Donald Trump campaign fires back: We paid to use Neil Young's song

Neil Young isn't too happy with Donald Trump. 
The New York real estate mogul arrived on stage at his campaign kickoff announcement Tuesday as the sounds of Young's "Rockin' In The Free World" blared through the atrium at Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan.
The only problem? Young blasted the Republican candidate following his announcement, with the rocker claiming Trump didn't have permission to use the music.
"Donald Trump was not authorized to use 'Rockin' In The Free World' in his presidential candidacy announcement," a statement from Young's team released late Tuesday read. "Neil Young, a Canadian citizen, is a supporter of Bernie Sanders for President of the United States of America."
However, when FOX411 reached Trump's campaign manager for comment, he sang a very different tune.
“Through a licensing agreement with ASCAP, Mr. Trump’s campaign paid for and obtained the legal right to use Neil Young’s recording of ‘Rockin' In The Free World,'" Trump's Campaign Manager Corey Lewandowski told us. "Nevertheless, there are plenty of other songs to choose from. Despite Neil’s differing political views, Mr. Trump likes him very much.”
It's not the first time -- or even the first time this year -- a candidate has been chastised by a musician for use of a tune. When Marco Rubio played the electronic hit "Something New" at a rally, the duo behind the song spoke out almost immediately, declaring Rubio hadn't obtained permission to use the song and they "don't want to be affiliated with a particular party during the upcoming presidential race."
Similarly, back in 2012, when Mitt Romney played Silversun Pickups' "Panic Switch," the band sent the Republican candidate a cease and desist letter and guitarist Brian Aubert declared, "We don't like people going behind our backs, using our music without asking, and we don't like the Romney campaign."
Plus, there can be a big cost associated with using a hit song to promote a campaign.
John McCain said in 2008, though he was a huge ABBA fan, he gave up on using one of their tunes at his campaign events.
"It's more difficult to play 'Let's Take A Chance On Me' than I thought," McCain said at the time, according to Reuters. "It gets expensive in a big hurry and if you're not careful you can alienate some Swedes."

How did federal agency get $500M from stimulus? ‘We misled Congress,’ ex-official says

On paper, it sounded like a true government success story: The Social Security Administration in September opened a "state-of-the-art" data center in Maryland, housing wage and benefit information on almost every American, "on time and under budget."
However, six years after Congress approved a half-billion dollars for the project -- the largest building project funded by the 2009 stimulus -- a whistleblower says the center was built on a lie.
"We misled Congress," Michael Keegan, a former associate commissioner who worked on the project, told FoxNews.com.
Officials originally claimed they needed the $500 million to replace their entire, 30-year-old National Computer Center located at agency headquarters in Woodlawn, Md. But Keegan says they overstated their case -- the agency has no plans to replace the center, and only moved a fraction of the NCC to the new site.
Keegan's claims were first heard last week at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing, where he testified on alleged retaliation he faced as a whistleblower. Though two watchdog agencies previously discarded his complaints, documents submitted to Congress and obtained by FoxNews.com along with congressional records appear to back him up, at least in part. They show:

1) SSA officials told Congress in 2009, and as late as 2011, they planned to "replace" the National Computer Center, using $500 million from the stimulus. 

2) That never happened. Rather, the agency built a new data center called the National Support Center, in Urbana, Md. This now houses data center functions from the National Computer Center, and is what was touted in September 2014. But the original, supposedly outdated NCC continues to operate, and hundreds still work there. And transcribed depositions from Keegan's lawsuit against the agency show top officials indeed have no plans to replace the entire NCC. 

Keegan maintains the agency didn't have to move anybody out of the NCC, and could have simply renovated the floor holding the old data center.
"The data center occupies one half of one floor in a four-story building," he told FoxNews.com. "We didn't need to build [the new center] to begin with."
Agency leaders disagree, and forged ahead. Yet the records show while officials originally talked about replacing the building, there are no plans to do so now.

'[W]e have yet to receive a coherent response from the agency as to the reasons it didn't do what it told Congress had to be done.'
- Morris Fischer, attorney for ex-SSA official

Acting Commissioner Carolyn Colvin said in a deposition she "did not" know of any plan to abandon the NCC or move all its workers to another site. Other officials echoed this statement.
"After seven months, we have yet to receive a coherent response from the agency as to the reasons it didn't do what it told Congress had to be done," Keegan's attorney Morris Fischer said.
Former SSA Commissioner Michael Astrue, who led the agency under President George W. Bush and for several years under President Obama, also said he's not sure why the building isn't being replaced entirely.
Astrue said he made the original decision to replace the NCC, toward the end of the Bush administration. He said the building was "antiquated and fraying," and was worried a disruption in payments could send "the entire economy into recession." A backup SSA center in North Carolina, he said, was not enough.
Astrue said his intention was to replace and phase out the NCC entirely, and disputed Keegan's claims that Congress was misled. He maintains the proposal was the "correct decision."
But he said he was "surprised" to learn the NCC is still in operation. He doesn't know why.
The agency's claims to Congress over the years were, at best, confusing.
In congressional hearings in 2009, SSA officials repeatedly said they planned to use stimulus funds to replace the NCC. In one April 2009 hearing, Mary Glenn-Croft, a deputy commissioner at SSA, said the funds "will help us process our increasing workloads and replace our aging National Computer Center."
But officials also occasionally referred to simply building a new "data center."
This may have given the agency just enough wiggle room.
When the Office of the Inspector General reviewed Keegan's complaints, it concluded the SSA "did not mislead" Congress to believe the NCC wouldn't be needed. At the same time, the OIG acknowledged SSA talked about "replacing" the center and "did not implicitly state" it would stay in use. (Further, while IG Patrick P. O'Carroll, Jr., oversaw the spending, he also was among those making the case for the project, telling Congress in 2009 the NCC was "rapidly approaching obsolescence.")
Like the OIG, the Office of Special Counsel last year also said they could not determine whether agency leaders misled Congress. Keegan disputes these findings.
The Social Security Administration has not yet responded to a request for comment from FoxNews.com.
The agency has said the new data center will meet SSA's "anticipated IT workloads for at least the next 20 years." The full budget for the project reportedly was about $750 million; it's unclear what the final price tag was for the "under budget" building, or what happened to the unused money.
Keegan suspects agency leaders pushed for the new building because they saw it as a "slam dunk" once word got out in 2009 about stimulus funding. "I think every IT person wants a new toy," he said, and they decided to go for "the whole ball of wax."
Of the new building, he said, "It's palatial."
Astrue, speaking with FoxNews.com, acknowledged the offer of stimulus funds prompted his agency to make the case for the building.
"That money was going to get spent one way or the other," he said, claiming the SSA project was more worthy than many others. "And Congress agreed."
Keegan's complaints are now at the center of nasty legal dispute over his treatment at the agency. As project executive for the center's construction, he said he brought his concerns to his higher-ups, but was subsequently placed under an internal probe and relieved of his duties. He said he was confined to an empty office with little or no work to do until mid-2014, when he retired early.

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Massachusetts lawmakers probe ex-Gov. Patrick's reported secret travel fund

If your governor had a secret travel fund worth tens of millions of dollars used to jet set to Japan, Israel and the United Arab Emirates, wouldn't you want to know about it? 
That's the question put to Massachusetts residents this week after revelations former Gov. Deval Patrick used off-the-record bookkeeping to conceal more than $37.5 million driven to a secret fund to pay for trips to promote Massachusetts abroad.
Democrats and Republicans in the Legislature have begun their probe of the former Democratic governor turned hedge fund manager for Bain Capital, once headed up by his fellow former Gov. Mitt Romney.
As uncovered by the Boston Herald on Friday, the former governor reportedly enjoyed dozens of trade missions abroad at public expense but without legislative approval. His administration is purported to have shoveled as much as $27 million into off-budget accounts from the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, Massport and the Mass Tech Collaborative, all quasi-independent agencies.
Both Massport, the state's port authority, and Mass Tech Collaborative, the venture seeking to bring Israeli tech firms to Massachusetts, paid $1.75 million for Patrick's trade trips.
This amount includes $535,558 for hotels, $332,193 for airfare, $305,976 for limos and more than $175,000 on other expenses.

IRS Finds 6,400 Lois Lerner Emails But Won't Hand Em Over

The Internal Revenue Service may have found 6,400 emails from Lois Lerner, who oversaw the tax agency’s Exempt Organizations Unit, but the government agency has no plans to share.  
Attorneys from the Department of Justice representing the IRS say the emails won’t be shared because the service is making sure that none of them are duplicates. Lerner is at the center of a scandal in which the tax agency denied special tax status to conservative groups. Her emails have been sought by members of Congress and conservative groups alike.
One of those groups, Judicial Watch, has been seeking emails as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed two years ago.  Originally, the IRS said the email trail was permanently lost because the computer drive that contained it crashed. However, the Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration or TIGTA, was able to retrieve 6,400 emails which it has subsequently sent to the agency. It is these emails that the IRS wants to check for duplicates.
However, Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton, has said that the inspector general’s office has already checked for copies. “Even though TIGTA already identified and removed emails that were duplicates, the IRS is in ‘the process of conducting further manual deduplication of the 6,400’ emails, rather than reviewing them in response to Judicial Watch’s FOIA requests that are more than two years old now,” Fitton told The Daily Caller. “Our legal team will continue pursuing all necessary and available legal options to hold the IRS accountable for its flagrant abuse of power.”
Applications for tax exempt status were held up by the IRS for weeks and months as the president sought re-election. Lerner has subsequently retired and, before claiming her 5^th amendment rights to prevent self-incrimination she claimed her own innocence on the matter.
This is the latest cloud swirling around the IRS which just last week announced plans to combat future cyber-attacks after thieves stole the personal information of 100,000 taxpayers earlier this year.

Reporter says Clinton camp denying him access to events

The simmering dispute over media access to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign erupted again Monday when a reporter for DailyMail.com was told by the campaign he couldn’t attend her events in New Hampshire.
David Martosko, a reporter for DailyMail.com, a website affiliated with the Daily Mail in London, said the Clinton camp said his newspaper wasn’t part of the official group -- known as the print pool -- that covers the White House on a rotating basis. As a result, he was blocked Monday from covering her events in person for the pool.
The campaign said it is trying to resolve the issue. However, it denied any suggestion that Martosko was denied access because of his newspaper’s critical coverage of Clinton.
“The Daily Mail can sensationalize [the incident] as they see fit for their readers, but that's what happened," a Clinton aide told Fox News.
Major media organizations in Clinton’s traveling press pool issued a statement Monday night defending Martosko and rejecting any attempt by the Clinton campaign to “dictate” who covers the candidate.
“We haven't yet had a clear explanation about why the pool reporter for today's events was denied access,” said the statement signed by the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Tribune Publishing, among others.
“But any attempt by the campaign to dictate who is in the pool is unacceptable.”
Most presidential campaigns essentially follow the procedures outlined by the White House Correspondents Association. To accommodate the frequent media crush, a newspaper reporter, a photographer and a TV crew, known as the pool, covers an event. Then the details are widely shared via email to reporters and others.
However, in covering Clinton, a group of 14 news organizations, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, have formed to cover events and share the information on a limited basis.
Group members argue that those who don’t share the expenses of covering a campaign shouldn’t have immediate access to the information, or “pool reports.”
While the Clinton camp has implied the Daily Mail is not among the 14, The Huffington Post reports that the paper is part of the special Clinton pool.
Still, this is not the first time a member of the foreign press has complained about being excluded from covering Clinton up close.
“My feeling is that some people have established the rules and that we haven’t been part of the discussion,” a reporter for the French TV network Canal Plus recently told The Post. “I went to Iowa to cover [Clinton’s] first event. I only saw her van. … I am fighting for equality and access for all.”
The Clinton camp on Monday also said: "We have been working to create an equitable system, and have had some concerns expressed by foreign outlets about not being a part of the rotation.”
A DailyMail.com spokesperson on Monday afternoon confirmed that Martosko was denied access to the Clinton event and kept from boarding a van that her campaign is using to transport pool reporters around New Hampshire. However, the campaign has yet to provide a full explanation, considering Martosko was scheduled to be the designated print pool reporter, the spokesperson also said.
Martosko tweeted: “For those of you asking: What I've seen online re: today is accurate, and I intend to report here whether they want me to or not."

ISIS routed by Kurdish fighters in Syrian border town

U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters took control of a strategic town on the Syria-Turkey border Monday, forcing ISIS militants to flee and cutting off a key supply line to the self-proclaimed caliphate's capital.
The Washington Post reported that the main Kurdish fighting force, known as the YPG, backed by affiliated Syrian rebels, had captured the town of Tal Abyad, claiming control of the town center by nightfall Monday. The Post also reported that the advancing forces had cut off ISIS' escape route from the town, surrounding it from the east, south, and west.
The loss of Tal Abyad, some 50 miles north of Raqqa, the capital of ISIS' self-declared caliphate, is the extremists' biggest setback since Kurdish fighters took control of the border town of Kobani near Turkey, after fighting IS for months. The Kurdish victory deprives ISIS of a direct route for bringing in foreign militants and supplies, and links the Kurds' two fronts, putting even more pressure on Raqqa.
An anti-ISIS media collective based in Raqqa said the extremists had set up checkpoints in the center of the city on Monday and installed security cameras in a main square.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed to the Associated Press the that Kurdish fighters had "almost full control" of Tal Abyad by Monday evening, and had taken command of the border crossing with Turkey. It said some 40 Islamic State militants were targeted by U.S.-led airstrikes as they tried to flee south.
An AP photographer in Akcakale, on the Turkish side of the border, saw several dozen YPG fighters waving their yellow triangular flag and flashing victory signs. Earlier, several dozen Kurdish gunmen were seen running up a hill, moving west.
A few people on the Syrian side of the border were seen raising the green, white and red flag of the Free Syrian Army before being apprehended by Turkish security after they broke a hole in the border fence. A contingent of Free Syrian Army fighters is battling alongside the Kurds in an effective alliance against ISIS called "Burkan al-Furat," or Volcano of the Euphrates.
Earlier, Kurdish units marching west from Kobani and others marching east from the Kurdish town of Ras al-Ayn met up in the village of Qaysariyeh, some two miles south of Tal Abyad as they encircled the town from three sides, leaving Turkey as the only outlet.
As with the Kurdish victory in Kobani, the YPG fighters' advance under the cover of the U.S-led air campaign highlighted the decisive importance of combining airstrikes with the presence of a cohesive and motivated ally on the ground — so clearly absent in Iraq and other parts of Syria.
With most of Syria now controlled by either ISIS or forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, the U.S. has found a reliable partner in the YPG, a group of moderate, mostly secular Kurdish militiamen driven by revolutionary fervor and the desire for self-rule.
Since the beginning of the year, they have wrested back more than 500 mostly Kurdish and Christian towns in northeastern Syria, as well as strategic mountains seized earlier by the Islamic State group. They have recently pushed into Raqqa province, an ISIS stronghold where Tal Abyad is located.
The Kurdish advance has caused the displacement of more than 16,000 people who fled to Turkey in the past two weeks. On Monday, up to 3,000 more refugees arrived at the Akcakale border crossing, according to Turkish state-run TRT television. An AP photographer saw large numbers of people at the border and thick smoke billowing as U.S.-led coalition aircraft targeted IS militants in Tal Abyad.
As Kurdish fighters push deeper into ISIS strongholds in northern Syria, tensions with ethnic Arabs and Turkmen in the region have risen.
On Monday, more than a dozen Syrian rebel groups accused the Kurdish fighters of deliberately displacing thousands of Arabs and Turkmen from Tal Abyad and the western countryside of predominantly Kurdish Hassakeh province. In a statement, they accused the YPG of committing "ethnic cleansing" — a charge strongly denied by the Kurds.
The accusation, which was not backed by evidence of ethnic or sectarian killings, threatened to escalate tensions between ethnic Arabs and Kurds as the Kurdish fighters conquer more territory in northern Syria.
"YPG forces ... have implemented a new sectarian and ethnic cleansing campaign against Sunni Arabs and Turkmen under the cover of coalition airstrikes which have contributed bombardment, terrorizing civilians and forcing them to flee their villages," the statement issued by rebel and militant groups said.
The 15 rebel groups, including the powerful ultraconservative Ahrar al-Sham and Jaish al-Islam, said the alleged ethnic cleansing was concentrated in Hassakeh province and in Tal Abyad, and was part of a plan by the Kurdish Democratic Party, or PYD, to partition Syria. The YPG, or People's Protection Units, is the armed wing of the PYD. The movement is affiliated with the Kurdish PKK, which has waged a long and bloody insurgency in southeastern Turkey.
The statement echoed comments last week by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
"On our border, in Tal Abyad, the West, which is conducting aerial bombings against Arabs and Turkmen, is unfortunately positioning terrorist members of the PYD and PKK in their place," Erdogan said.
Khalil, the YPG spokesman, strongly refuted the claim, and seeking to calm nerves, said the YPG is a Syrian national group whose battles are directed solely against ISIS.
"We say to residents of Tal Abyad, there is no reason for you to cross to another country (Turkey). Our towns are open to you, you are our people and you will return to your towns, villages and properties," he said.
He pledged that the YPG will not interfere in administering Tal Abyad once it falls, leaving it to civilian committees.