Louisiana religious liberty bill goes down in defeat as Republicans side with LGBT activists

UPDATE: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal issued an Executive Order late Tuesday to protect religious liberty and prevent the state from discriminating against those with deeply held religious beliefs.
“In Louisiana, the state should not be able to take adverse action against a person for their belief in traditional marriage,” Jindal said. “That’s why I’m issuing an Executive Order to prevent the state from discriminating against people, charities and family-owned businesses with deeply held religious beliefs that marriage is between one man and one woman.
Earlier story:
Louisiana Republican lawmakers sided with Democrats, big business and LGBT activists to kill a bill that would have protected individuals and religious institutions opposed to same-sex marriage.
In doing so, lawmakers defied the objections of an overwhelmingly majority of voters and handed Gov. Bobby Jindal a significant defeat for his legislative agenda.
A house legal committee voted 10-2 on Tuesday to shelve the Louisiana Marriage and Conscience Act – a measure that critics said could sanction discrimination against same-sex couples.
However, the proposed law clearly stated its sole purpose was to prevent the government from discriminating against a person or a non-profit because of their support for traditional marriage.
“These ten legislators voted today against freedom and against two-thirds of Louisianans who support the Marriage and Conscience Act,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and a supporter of the bill. “This is a failure of leadership and goes to the heart of what’s wrong with American politics today.”
Perkins was referring to a WPA poll commissioned by the Louisiana Family Forum and FRC that indicated 67 percent of likely voters supported the bill. Even more shocking – 63 percent of Democrats supported the bill.
“These elected leaders effectively endorsed government discrimination against individuals and nonprofits simply for believing in marriage between a man and a woman,” Perkins said. “No person or nonprofit should lose tax exempt status, face disqualification, lose a professional license or be punished by the government simply for believing what President Obama believed just three years ago – that marriage is the union of a man and a woman.”
Among those strong-arming the bill was IBM – which is building a technology jobs center in Baton Rouge.  An IBM executive penned a letter to The Times-Picayune warning that “IBM will find it much harder to attract talent to Louisiana if this bill is passed and enacted into law.”
Gov. Jindal scoffed at such threats in an April 23 op-ed published by The New York Times.
“I have a clear message for any corporation that contemplates bullying our state: save your breath,” he wrote.
He said he would not be deterred by corporations that were pressured by radical liberals.
“As a nation we would not compel a priest, minister or rabbi to violate his conscience and perform a same-sex wedding ceremony,” Jindal wrote. “But a great many Americans who are not members of the clergy feel just as called to live their faith through their businesses. That’s why we should ensure that musicians, caterers, photographers and others should be immune from government coercion on deeply held religious convictions.”
Equality Louisiana accused Johnson of trying to bring discrimination to the state through the back door. They partnered with Louisiana Progress Action and other groups to oppose the bill.
“I remain convinced that the bill is bad for Louisiana – bad for our state’s economy and bad for our state’s people,” Equality Louisiana’s Matthew Patterson said in a statement.
State Rep. Mike Johnson authored the bill. The Republican, from Bossier City, took a beating not only from the Left – but also from fellow Republicans.
A Republican city councilman in Baton Rouge called him a “despicable bigot of the highest order.”
“It’s shameful,” Johnson told me. “He never met me before he said that. He never read the legislation. People will say what they say – I can’t control that.”
However, it appears that Republican lawmakers bought into the lies and distortions propagated by activists and big business.
“This bill is a simple measure to protect religious freedom,” Johnson said. “A few well-funded activist groups have intentionally mischaracterized the bill – spreading fear and intimidation and misinformation.”
Johnson said he was not at all surprised by the survey that found even Louisiana Democrats supported his doomed measure.
“The people of Louisiana are at their heart very patriotic, very conservative – even in the Democrat party,” he said. “They understand that religious liberty ought to be protected.”
Johnson said he has seen the future of religious liberty in America – and it is grim.
He foresees a day when Christian churches could lose their tax-exempt status and Christian schools could lose their accreditation. He foresees a day when those who refuse to endorse same-sex marriage could be prohibited from practicing their profession.
That’s why he pushed the legislation.
“If society’s views on marriage are going to change – if the Supreme Court declares there is a right to same-sex marriage – we have to do all we can to ensure that religious liberty is not a casualty of that new and emerging idea,” he said.

House Benghazi committee subpoenas ex-Clinton White House aide Blumenthal

The House select committee investigating the deadly 2012 Benghazi attack issued a subpoena Tuesday to former Clinton White House aide Sidney Blumenthal.
Committee spokesman Jamal Ware confirmed to Fox News that Blumenthal had been called to give a deposition before the committee.
The subpoena of Blumenthal came a day after The New York Times reported that Hillary Clinton had received private intelligence reports from Blumenthal regarding the situation in Libya during the civil war that led to the fall of Muammar Qaddafi in 2011. According to the paper, Hillary sent some of those reports on to aides and State Department personnel.
At the same time that he was sending the memos to Clinton, the Times reported, Blumenthal was advising business associates who were hoping to win contracts from Libya's transitional post-Qaddafi government. The Times report did not make clear what, if anything, Clinton and the State Department knew of Blumenthal's involvement in any potential business projects in Libya.
Blumenthal served as a senior adviser to former President Bill Clinton between 1997 and 2001, but the Times reported that the Obama administration prohibited him from taking a job with Clinton's State Department team.
Late Tuesday, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the Benghazi committee's ranking Democrat, accused Republicans on the committee of heavy-handed tactics in issuing the subpoena to Blumenthal.
"There was no need for the Select Committee to send two U.S. Marshals to the home of Sidney Blumenthal to serve his wife with a subpoena, especially since the Committee never bothered to contact him first to ask him whether he would voluntarily come in," Cummings said. "These heavy-handed, aggressive, and unnecessary tactics waste the time of the U.S. Marshal service."
"Those who complain about the committee's speed don't get to complain when the committee cuts to the chase," committee spokesman Ware said, referencing previous claims by Cummings that the committee's investigation was politically motivated and designed to hurt Clinton's chances in the 2016 presidential election.
The Times report also indicated that Clinton may have used a second e-mail address to handle her official correspondence. Emails published by the Times show Clinton writing from the address, hrod17@clintonemail.com. This is distinct from the other address she has acknowledged using as secretary of state, hdr22@clintonemail.com.
Ware told FoxNews.com earlier Tuesday it was not clear whether the multiple e-mail addresses reflected a glitch or proved Clinton really was using two email addresses, contrary to what her office claims.
"There's only one way to know that for certain," Ware said in an email. "For Clinton to turn over the server for independent analysis."

New nuclear threat? North Korea claims it has miniaturized warheads

North Korea claimed Wednesday that it has manufactured nuclear warheads small enough to fit on the head of a nuclear submarine, an announcement that is likely to rachet up tensions in east Asia, particularly with South Korea.
According to Yonhap News, a spokesman for North Korea's National Defense Commission said that the development of the alleged weapons was part of an initiative to boost Pyongyang's self-defense capability.
"It is long since the DPRK's nuclear striking means have entered the stage of producing smaller nukes and diversifying them," the spokesman said, using the acronym of North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. "The DPRK has reached the stage of ensuring the highest precision and intelligence and best accuracy of not only medium- and short-range rockets, but long-range ones."
If the North's claim is true, it presents a fresh threat to the security of South Korea and Japan, as well as the United States. Pyongyang has previously claimed that it has the technology to build a nuclear weapon small enough to fit on an intercontinental ballistic missile, which could reach the U.S. mainland.
The statement comes days after North Korea claimed that it had successfully test-fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile earlier this month. South Korea had downplayed that announcement, characterizing the exercise as a test ejection, rather than a firing. South Korean officials believe the missile only traveled approximately 110 yards after it left the water, Yonhap reported.
The South Korean assessment was supported Tuesday by Navy Adm. James Winnefeld, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who told an audience at a Washington think tank that North Korea was "years away" from developing the capability to launch ballistic missiles from submarines.
The U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore raised its own questions about the viability of North Korea's claimed test, saying that images released by Pyongyang may have been altered and raising the possibility that the missiles were launched from a submerged barge instead of a submarine.
However, U.S. and South Korean officials appear to have acknowledged that North Korea carried out a test of some kind. On Tuesday, Winnefeld said that if North Korea develops the capability of launching ballistic missiles from a submarine, "it will present a hard-to-detect danger for Japan and South Korea as well as our servicemembers stationed in the region."

ABC News Cartoon

Supreme Court strikes down Maryland double-tax law, other states could feel revenue pinch

The Supreme Court on Monday struck down a Maryland tax that effectively double-taxes residents for income earned in other states -- a decision that could cost Maryland and other states with similar policies hundreds of millions of dollars.
In a 5-4 ruling, the justices agreed with a lower court that the tax is unconstitutional because it discourages Maryland residents from earning money outside the state.
"Maryland's tax scheme is inherently discriminatory," the justices wrote in the majority opinion. They wrote that the policy effectively discourages "interstate commerce."
The ruling said: "If every State adopted Maryland's tax structure, interstate commerce would be taxed at a higher rate than intrastate commerce."
The ruling could have far-reaching consequences beyond just Maryland. It also could affect similar laws in other states, including New York, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
At issue in this case is Maryland's treatment of money earned out of state.
Most states give residents a full credit for income taxes paid on money earned out of state. Yet Maryland, while allowing residents to deduct income taxes paid to other states from their state tax, did not apply that deduction to a local "piggy back" tax collected for counties and some city governments.
Maryland claimed it had authority to tax all the income its residents earn to pay for local services like public schools.
The challenge to the policy was brought by a Maryland businessman who earned money in multiple states, and complained about the double-tax.
In the near-term, the court decision could cost Maryland hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.

Duke rebuke: Professor defiant after school condemns racially charged remarks

A Duke University professor was defiant after the school last week condemned his "noxious" and "offensive" words in a letter published in The New York Times in which he compared African-Americans unfavorably to Asian-Americans.
The school's rebuke came after a student backlash against Political Science Professor Jerry Hough, 80, whose May 9 letter sought to address racism and the Baltimore riots. Hough said African-Americans don't try to integrate into society, while Asians “worked doubly hard” to overcome racism instead of blaming it.

“Virtually every black has a strange new name that symbolizes their lack of desire for integration.”
- Duke University Prof. Jerry Hough

“Every Asian student has a very simple old American first name that symbolizes their desire for integration,” he wrote on May 10. “Virtually every black has a strange new name that symbolizes their lack of desire for integration.”
Duke students and faculty blasted Hough last week, and the school told The News & Observer of Raleigh that he was placed on leave and that 2016 will be his last year at the school.
“The comments were noxious, offensive, and have no place in civil discourse,” said Duke spokesman Michael Schoenfeld. “Duke University has a deeply held commitment to inclusiveness grounded in respect for all, and we encourage our community to speak out when they feel that those ideals are challenged or undermined, as they were in this case.”
But Hough, in an e-mail to an ABC affiliate, said political correctness is getting in the way of thoughtful and frank debate.
“I am strongly against the obsession with ‘sensitivity,'" Hough wrote. "The more we have emphasized sensitivity in recent years, the worse race relations have become. I think that is not an accident. I know that the 60 years since the Montgomery bus boycott is a long time, and things must be changed. The Japanese and other Asians did not obsess with the concentration camps and the fact they were linked with blacks as ‘colored.’"
Hough even played the "Coach K" card, referencing beloved and legendary Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski in his email.
"Coach K did not obsess with all the Polish jokes about Polish stupidity," Hough wrote. "He pushed ahead and achieved. And by his achievement and visibility, he has played a huge role in destroying stereotypes about Poles. Many blacks have done that too, but no one says they have done as well on the average as the Asians.”
Citing privacy, the university would not comment on the professor’s future at the school, the station reported. University officials say Hough has been on a standard academic leave for the 2014-15 school year.

State Department plans January 2016 deadline for release of Hillary Clinton emails

The State Department is planning to release 55,000 pages of emails stored on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private e-mail server by January of next year, according to a court filing.
The department has asked a federal judge to approve a plan requiring the release of all of Clinton's emails by January 15, 2016. The request is related to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed this past January by Vice News and was first reported by POLITICO.
If the request is approved, the complete set of emails could be released just over two weeks before the Iowa caucus. Clinton is the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination.
In the document, the State Department's acting director of the Office of Information Programs and Services, John Hackett, cited the "voluminous" collection of correspondence as the reason for the late proposed release date.
"Given the breadth and importance of the many foreign policy issues on which the Secretary of State and the Department work, the review of these materials will likely require consultation with a broad range of subject matter experts within the Department and other agencies, as well as potentially with foreign governments," Hackett continued. The department's filing claimed that 12 staffers had been assigned to review Clinton's emails and redact sensitive information.
The contents of Clinton's messages have been a topic of interest since The New York Times first reported in March that Clinton conducted all of her correspondence from a private e-mail account set up when she was nominated to become Secretary of State in late 2008. Subsequent reports revealed that the account was located on a server operating out of her New York home.
The reports raised questions about whether Clinton had attempted to circumvent federal recordkeeping laws in an effort to head off requests for official communications from government watchdogs and the news media. The use of a so-called "homebrew" server caused cybersecurity experts to question how much sensitive diplomatic correspondence was vulnerable to foreign hackers.
Clinton has said that she turned over the 55,000 pages to the State Department last year after her attorneys reviewed them and deemed them relevant public records. She added that she has since deleted all her emails from her personal server.
Earlier this year, Clinton turned over 300 pages of emails to the House select committee investigating the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. There was no immediate comment late Monday from Republicans on the committee about the State Department's plan.
The Department has said it is planning a separate release of 850 pages of emails related to the Benghazi attack in the coming weeks.

Dispute over parking space may have ignited deadly Texas biker gang brawl, report claims

Authorities in Texas reportedly are investigating whether a dispute over a parking space set off a deadly brawl and shootout between motorcycle gangs outside a Waco restaurant Sunday afternoon.
The Dallas Morning News reported that police were pursuing the parking space theory after interviewing several witnesses to the violent melee that left 9 gang members dead and injured 18 others. 170 gang members were charged with organized crime activity Monday, and investigators left open the possibility that capital murder charges may be filed. Bond was set at $1 million for each suspect, and the Morning News reported that members of each gang being kept separate from the other gangs at the local jail.
It’s like the Wild West,” McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara told the paper. “These guys become very violent to each other very quickly over nothing."
Authorities remained on high alert Monday after receiving what they called "credible information" that members of other motorcycle gangs might be heading to Waco to attack law enforcement officers in retaliation for Sunday's violence. Members of tactical units from various law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, stood guard over the crime scene outside the Twin Peaks restaurant, while snipers stood on the roof.
Waco Police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton said that bikers had been spotted traveling into Waco, but no further violence had been reported Monday.
 "We have a contingency plan to deal with those individuals if they try to cause trouble here," Swanton said.
Earlier Monday, Dallas TV station WFAA reported that the Texas Department of Public Safety's Joint Information Center issued a bulletin May 1 that cautioned authorities about increasing violence between the Bandidos and the Cossacks. McNamara has said all nine people who were killed in the melee Sunday were part of those two groups.
  The bulletin said the tension could stem from Cossacks refusing to pay Bandidos dues for operating in Texas and for wearing a patch on their vest that claimed Texas as their turf without the Bandidos' approval.
  "Traditionally, the Bandidos have been the dominant motorcycle club in Texas, and no other club is allowed to wear the Texas bar without their consent," the bulletin said, according to WFAA.
  The bulletin said the FBI had received information that Bandidos had discussed "going to war with Cossacks." It also outlined several recent incidents between the two groups, including one instance in March when about 10 Cossacks forced a Bandido to pull over along Interstate 35 near Waco and attacked him with "chains, batons and metal pipes before stealing his motorcycle," WFAA reported.
  That same day, a group of Bandidos confronted a Cossack member fueling up at a truck stop in Palo Pinto County, west of Fort Worth, the bulletin said. When the Cossack member refused to remove the Texas patch from his vest, the Bandidos hit him in the head with a hammer and stole it.
The Bandidos "constitute a growing criminal threat to the U.S. law enforcement authorities," the Justice Department said in a report on outlaw motorcycle gangs. According to the report, the Bandidos are involved in transporting and distributing cocaine and marijuana and in the production and distribution of methamphetamine.
Five gangs from across Texas had gathered at Twin Peaks to in part settle differences over turf, Swanton has said.
Police and the restaurant operators were aware of Sunday's meeting in advance, and 18 Waco officers in addition to state troopers were outside the restaurant when the fight began, Swanton said. Police have acknowledged firing on armed bikers, but it was unclear how many of the dead were shot by gang members and how many were shot by officers.