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“I grew up in the Hispanic community,” Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, son of a Cuban immigrant, told “The Hard Line” host Ed Berliner. “It’s who I am.

“Hispanics, the values in our community, are conservative values: faith, family, patriotism. Do you know that the rate of military enlistment in the Hispanic community is higher than any community in America?”

“Hard work, providing for your children. All of those are conservative values,” Cruz added.

“All of those are Hispanic values. The policies of Barack Obama have wreaked devastation in the Hispanic community. They’re not working. The Hispanic community is hurting because of it.”

And Hispanics are key to the “old Reagan coalition” that Cruz hopes to pull together to carry him into the White House.

“We bring together conservatives and evangelicals and libertarians,” he told Berliner. “We bring together young people and Hispanics and women and Reagan Democrats. You know what I am so encouraged by? The incredible support and enthusiasm we’re seeing across the country.”

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A former board member of Hewlett-Packard who voted to fire Carly Fiorina as CEO is now endorsing the businesswoman’s 2016 Republican presidential campaign.

“Carly did what she was brought in to do: turn the company around and make it successful again. Not only did she save the company from the dire straits it was in, she laid the foundation for HP’s future growth,” Tom Perkins wrote for a full-page New York Times ad.

“Critics often claim Carly was fired at HP because she was unsuccessful. As a member of the board, I can tell you this is not true. In truth, it was the Board I was a part of that was ineffective and dysfunctional,” Perkins wrote. He added that his vote to fire her “was a mistake.”

The comments, in an advertisement placed in the newspaper’s business section Thursday by a pro-Fiorina super-PAC, were framed as a response to an Aug. 18 Times column criticizing Fiorina’s business record as “not so sterling.”

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Kathleen Willey, one of the women caught in the crossfire of alleged sexual harassment by former President Bill Clinton and what she characterizes as acts of intimidation to silence her, has taken issue with Hillary Clinton’s remarks last week comparing terrorists to Republicans engaged in a so-called war on women.

“This woman wrote the book on terrorizing women, on terrorism,” exclaimed Willey during an interview Sunday on Aaron Klein’s Investigative Radio program.

Continued Willey: “Her tactics and the things that she set in motion against all the women like me, the ones you have heard of and the ones you haven’t heard of, and the ones who are so scared that fled the country, are terrorist tactics like I’ve never seen before.”

“I went through them. I lived through them. And I know exactly what I am talking about. She is the war on women. I don’t care what anybody says.”

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Planned Parenthood announced it will sue Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal for terminating its Medicaid contract with the state.

“Planned Parenthood is flailing,” said Mike Reed, Jindal’s communications director, in a statement to The Daily Signal. “This lawsuit is without merit and the state will aggressively defend our right to cancel the contract.”

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of efforts Planned Parenthood has made to exonerate itself following allegations that it is engaged in the sale of fetal body parts.

Jindal, a Republican, ended Planned Parenthood’s contract with Louisiana following the release of several undercover videos by the Center for Medical Progress depicting Planned Parenthood officials’ discussing the sale of fetal body parts at the organization’s affiliates.

Elizabeth Slattery, a legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, said that “even though the Obama administration is attempting to pressure states not to cut Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid funding, states are within their rights to do so if Planned Parenthood has violated the law.”

“In light of videos released by the Center for Medical Progress, there are serious questions about whether Planned Parenthood has violated a number of federal laws,” said Slattery.

“This is the same Planned Parenthood affiliate that was forced to pay the state of Texas $1.4 million in a settlement for allegations of Medicaid fraud,” she added.

Reed said Jindal has the right to terminate the state’s contract with Planned Parenthood.

“The Medicaid provider contract between the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals and Planned Parenthood gives either party the right to cancel the contract at will with a 30-day notice. Governor Jindal and [the Department of Health and Hospitals] chose to exercise that right to cancel,” Reed said in the statement.

According to the Washington Post, Planned Parenthood has requested that a federal judge prevent the governor’s order from going into effect.

“I canceled Planned Parenthood’s contracts to make sure they weren’t getting taxpayer dollars from the state of Louisiana,” Jindal said in a video about the lawsuit posted on his Twitter account.

“I’m not going to back down,” he added.

Spokesmen for Planned Parenthood have called the videos “heavily edited,” and have denied that the organization makes a profit from its tissue donation program.

“This political grandstanding could have real and devastating consequences for the women, men and young people who rely on us,” Cecile Richards, chief executive of Planned Parenthood, said in a statement provided to The Hill. “And that’s why we’re going to fight this with everything we’ve got.”

The Daily Signal previously reported that when demonstrators gathered outside the governor’s mansion to protest his decision to defund Planned Parenthood, his staff played the Center for Medical Progress videos for them.

The sale of fetal human body parts is a felony in the United States.

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Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul will continue performing eye surgery if elected president, he told CNN on Friday.

“I jokingly said we’re going to turn the Lincoln bedroom into a surgery suite,” he told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on “New Day.”

The Kentucky senator recently came back from a mission trip to Haiti with the University of Utah, where he said the group performed 200 cataract surgeries, adding that he hopes his next mission trip will be performing surgeries on Indian reservations next year.

Paul said he still practices medicine in Kentucky for people who don’t have money or insurance.

“You think politics could be frustrating sometimes, you’re absolutely right,” he said. “But in medicine the amazing thing is we all unify around a goal, someone is blind, we remove the cataract and they can see again. There’s probably nothing more rewarding than seeing that smile.”

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Gareth Williams, 31, dug out the guestlist for an event the former American president was going to as a favour for a pal. The codebreaker — who had breached his security clearance — handed the list to the friend, who was also to be a guest. MI6 bosses raged over the data breach amid growing tensions with US security services over Mr Williams’s transatlantic work.

A source said: “The Clinton diary hack came at a time when Williams’s work with America was of the most sensitive nature. It was a diplomatic nightmare for Sir John Sawers, the new director of MI6 at the time.”

Eight days later his naked body was found folded into the 32in by 19in bag placed in the bath of his flat in Pimlico, central London.

His mobile phone and sim cards were laid out on a table. The last computer evidence of him being alive showed him looking at a cycling website.

Detectives are still baffled as to how the maths genius and expert cryptographer died.

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The press conference brought together a group of black pastors and pro-life leaders who are demanding that the portrait gallery, which is a part of the federally funded Smithsonian Institution, remove a bust of Margaret Sanger.
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The bust is featured in the gallery’s “The Struggle for Justice” exhibit, which focuses on historical equal rights achievements in America. Depictions of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks are featured in the exhibit nearby Sanger’s bust.

“So I have a message for the Smithsonian. I have an idea,” said Bozell. “What if we were to do this: What if we were to take that bust down but leave the stand, leave it standing there? Let it quietly represent that hero, that man or that woman we will never know because he and she was aborted, and the incredible accomplishment.”

“And then let us take that bust, take it to a far off place, dig a deep, deep hole, put it inside, and apologize to the dirt,” he said.

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In an interview aired Tuesday on “The Steve Malzberg Show,” Republican presidential candidate and former senator Rick Santorum said he was sickened by a video in which a former medical worker who harvested tissue from fetuses aborted by Planned Parenthood described how she watched one infant’s heart beating before she was asked to cut out its brain.

“How low can we go? How much can we walk down this road to depravity that we just see a little child, a child with a beating heart, and your reaction is to dissect it. Your reaction is to remove a brain while the heart is beating. How cruel is this?” Santorum said.

“How much have we dehumanized that child in the womb? How callus are we to human life and what’s the effect on the American psyche? What’s the effect on who we are as people if we just have such coldness to how we treat innocent human life?”

Some in Congress have called for Planned Parenthood — which describes itself as an agency delivering “vital reproductive health care, sex education, and information to millions of women, men, and young people worldwide” and receives millions in federal money — to be defunded.

But Santorum said that doesn’t go far enough.

“Planned Parenthood should not just be defunded, it should be prosecuted. If that child was alive, there are laws in place to prosecute these people who are doing these horrific things,” he said.

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The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has just filed a lawsuit intended to block students from participating in Nevada’s groundbreaking near-universal education savings account (ESA) option. The ESA option was signed into law this spring by Gov. Brian Sandoval, R-Nev., and began accepting applications a few weeks ago.

More than 2,200 parents have already applied to participate in the ESA option, which provides students with a portion (roughly $5,100 annually) of the funds that would have been spent on them in their public school in an ESA account that they can then use to pay for a variety of education-related services, products, and providers.

They can use their ESA to pay for private school tuition, online learning, special education services and therapies, textbooks, curricula, and a host of other education-related expenditures. As the name implies, parents can also save unused funds, rolling dollars over from year-to-year to pay for future education costs.

The ACLU’s lawsuit alleges that the ESA program “violates the Nevada Constitution’s prohibition against the use of public money for sectarian (religious) purposes.” Yet ESA funds go directly to parents, who can then choose from any education option that is right for their child.

The Foundation for Excellence in Education explains that the Arizona Court of Appeals noted in a similar case in 2013,

“The ESA does not result in an appropriation of public money to encourage the preference of one religion over another, or religion per se over no religion. Any aid to religious schools would be a result of the genuine and independent private choices of the parents. The parents are given numerous ways in which they can educate their children suited to the needs of each child with no preference given to religious or nonreligious schools or programs.”

The Institute for Justice, which will be defending the ESA option, is confident it does not violate the state’s constitution.

Tim Keller, a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice, declared that,

“Nevada’s Education Savings Account (ESA) Program was enacted to help parents and children whose needs are not being met in their current public schools, and we will work with them to intervene in this lawsuit and defeat it.”

“The United States Supreme Court, as well as numerous state supreme courts, have already held that educational choice programs, like Nevada’s ESA Program, are constitutional. We expect the same from Nevada courts.”

Education director for the Goldwater Institute, Jonathan Butcher, had this to say,

“Every child deserves the chance at a great education and the opportunity to pursue the American Dream. Lawsuits such as this challenge parents’ ability to help their children succeed,”

“Nevada has a unique law that makes flexible learning options available to every child attending a public school and a treasurer that has committed his team to listening to public comments and designing a successful education savings account program. Opponents should give students the chance to succeed with these accounts.”

Education savings accounts are one of the most promising paths forward on choice in education. They enable families to direct every single dollar of their child’s state per-pupil funding that is deposited into their account to a wide variety of education options. Arizona became the first state, in 2011, to enact the ESA model.

Today, five states, including Arizona, Mississippi, Tennessee, Florida, and Nevada have ESAs in place, with Nevada’s being notable because it will be available to every single child currently enrolled in a public school. It is the first program universally available to all public school students. Arizona, which has the longest-running ESA option, has had great success for participating families.

As Marc Ashton, father to Max Ashton who is legally blind and used the ESA prior to finishing high school explained,

“A blind student in Arizona gets about $21,000 a year. That $21,000 represents what Arizona spends to educate a student such as Max in the public-school system.”

“We took our 90 percent of that, paid for Max to get the best education in Arizona, plus all of his Braille, all of his technology, and then there was still money left over to put toward his college education,” Marc explains. “So he is going to be able to go on to Loyola Marymount University, because we were able to save money, even while sending him to the best school in Arizona, out of what the state would normally pay for him.”

That type of customization and innovation is what the ACLU is threatening now in Nevada. It’s a shame that special interest groups continue to threaten choice in education, when choice is what is needed so badly, for so many.

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Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a 2016 GOP presidential candidate, stormed into the Commonwealth of Virginia on Saturday with a spring in his step heading into the next stages of the GOP presidential election.

Walker, who just scored key conservative Sen. Mark Obenshain to chair his Virginia campaign efforts, is the first presidential candidate on the GOP side this campaign cycle to make a stop in the all-important Prince William County, a swing county. Walker’s pickup of Obenshain, of course, is a direct contrast to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush bringing aboard disgraced former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor on his campaign, a couple of blasts from the past up against two conservative stalwarts. Cantor is the only Majority Leader in the history of the United States of America to ever lose re-election in a primary, proving just how unpopular he is statewide in Virginia and in his old district, now represented by Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA).

Speaking before a crowd of a couple hundred at a PWC Young Republicans cookout at the county GOP headquarters, Walker lambasted the Washington establishment and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He said Clinton’s email scandal should mean she is “disqualified” from being president. He joked, too, that the leftwing Occupy Wall Street movement didn’t start on Wall Street—it started on his street in Wisconsin. Most importantly, Walker appeared to have a renewed level of energy and seemed to be having fun.

“We took on 100,000 protesters,” Walker said. “My wife Tonette is here with me today—my boys and I and Tonette, we faced all the death threats against me, the threats against our family, the threats against our lawmakers. We dealt with 100,000 protesters who occupied our Capitol. The Occupy Wall Street movement didn’t start on Wall Street; it started on my street in Madison, Wisconsin. They retreated to Wall Street after they lost. For a while there was a point for about a month where 14 Senate Democrats in the minority decided to leave the state and go south into Illinois and go south to try to stop what we were doing to push reform. In the end, we prevailed. When it was all said and done, one of my good friends Congressman Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) gave me a great bumper sticker. It said ‘One Walker Beats 14 Runners.’”

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A Missouri school district is under fire for allowing students to use restrooms and locker rooms designated for the opposite sex.

Alliance Defending Freedom has sent a letter to the Hillsboro R-3 School District asking the board of education to change its recent decision.
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“Protecting students from inappropriate exposure to the opposite sex is not only perfectly legal, it’s a school district’s duty,” ADF legal counsel Matt Sharp said in a statement. “Letting boys into girls’ locker rooms and restrooms is an invasion of privacy and a threat to student safety.”

Opponents of policies allowing students to use facilities designated for the opposite gender say that such policies violate student privacy and can endanger students.

“Instead of protecting children, the school district is needlessly creating an environment that invites violations of student privacy,” said ADF senior legal counsel Jeremy Tedesco in the statement. “The first duty of school district officials is to protect the children who attend school. The ADF model policy demonstrates that schools can accommodate the desires of a small number of students without compromising the rights of other children and their parents.”

Supporters of policies allowing students to use bathrooms and locker rooms designated for the opposite sex argue that it creates an inclusive environment for transgender students.

According to the National Center for Transgender Equality:

Too often, school officials themselves single out these youth by refusing to respect their gender identity and even punishing them for expressing that identity. For example, 59 percent of trans students have been denied access to restrooms consistent with their gender identity. Rather than focusing on their education, many students struggle for the ability to come to school and be themselves without being punished for wearing clothes or using facilities consistent with who they are.

In the letter to school district officials, Sharp and Tedesco, along with other signatories, write that “[w]e seek to reaffirm the commonsense proposition that compelling students to share restrooms and locker rooms with members of the opposite sex violates their right to bodily privacy and would not only lead to potential legal liability for the School District and its employees, but would also violate students’ and parents’ fundamental rights.”

They argue that “no federal law requires public schools to open sex-specific restrooms, showers, and changing areas to opposite-sex students,” and “providing such access violates the fundamental rights of the vast majority of students and parents.”

The writers propose an alternative policy, which they argue will “accommodate students with unique privacy needs, including transgender students, while also protecting other students’ privacy and free exercise rights, and parents’ right to educate their children.”

They promise that their proposed policy “serves to better insulate your Districts from legal liability,” and that if the policy is legally challenged, they will “review the facts and, if appropriate, offer to defend your District free of charge.”

A Hillsboro school district official did not immediately return a request for comment.

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A New York Russian Orthodox mom has won the right to exempt her autistic son from getting the school-mandated measles/mumps/rubella vaccination after citing her moral opposition to abortion, The Post has learned.

The woman said she objected on religious grounds because of the MMR vaccine’s link to the cells of aborted fetuses.

The city Department of Education rejected her bid for exemption after questioning the sincerity of her religious beliefs during the summer and fall of 2013.

But the mother, a Russian immigrant whose name was withheld under privacy laws, filed an appeal with the state Education Department.

Education Commissioner Mary Ellen Elia sided with the parent and granted the student exemption in an Aug. 3 ruling.

“Her opposition to the MMR vaccine stems from sincerely held religious beliefs. … Furthermore, petitioner produced information relative to specific ingredients … which appears to provide the linkage between vaccines and aborted fetal tissue,” Elia said.

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US Senator Ted Cruz wrapped up a two-day New Hampshire trip for his presidential campaign, arguing that he is the proven antiestablishment candidate in a crowded field of GOP contenders.

Speaking to the New Hampshire House Business Caucus at a sports bar, Cruz told a crowd of about 150, “If you see a candidate that Washington embraces, run and hide.” There are others in the race, the Texan said, who are “squishy Washington establishment moderates, but they don’t tell you that.”


Recent polling of the presidential race shows that Republican primary voters are embracing candidates who appear to challenge the party’s long-time lawmakers and politicians. For example, on Sunday and Monday, two separate surveys showed political newcomers Donald Trump and Ben Carson leading the GOP field in the Iowa Caucuses.

During Cruz’s trip to the Granite State, he visited a lobster pound, attended house parties, and opened his state headquarters in Manchester. It was his first trip to New Hampshire since late May. Instead, Cruz has spent much of his campaign time in Iowa and South Carolina, where there is a stronger evangelical community — a group he frequently courts for its reliable votes in those states.

If he were elected president, Cruz said he would focus on the economy, protect constitutional rights, and “restore America to greatness” with a strong foreign policy.

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Second Amendment advocates are firing away at a decision by Honolulu officials to destroy $575,000 worth of perfectly good handguns in a move one critic called the “height of anti-gun stupidity.”

Some 2,300 Smith & Wesson 9 mm handguns, including at least 200 that are brand-new and in unopened boxes, were issued to the city’s police department. But with the 2,200-member force upgrading to lighter and less expensive Glock 17s, the guns were set to be permanently holstered. While it is customary throughout the country for departments to auction the guns to law-abiding citizens, including the police who once carried them, or donate them to another department, Honolulu opted to destroy them.

“Mayor Kirk Caldwell and the Honolulu Police Department agreed that they would not allow the guns to be sold to the general public and end up on the streets of Honolulu,” Honolulu Police spokeswoman Michelle Yu told FoxNews.com. “The same goes for selling the individual gun parts that could have been used to assemble a gun.”

Selling the guns, with mandatory background checks to ensure they were only purchased by legal owners, could have netted the city $575,000, according to Hawaii News Now. Several police officers reportedly were interested in buying old service weapons for personal use, and the department has previously sold phased-out weapons to its staff, but this time opted to melt them down two weeks ago.

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On the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton compared pro-life people to terrorists:

“I would like these Republican candidates to look the mom in the eye who caught her breast cancer early because she was able to get a screening for cancer, or the teenager who didn’t get pregnant because she had access to contraception, or anyone who’s ever been protected by an HIV test. Now, extreme views about women?” Clinton says in the video. “We expect that from some of the terrorist groups.”

Clinton continued: “We expect that from people who don’t want to live in the modern world, but it’s a little hard to take coming from Republicans who want to be the president of the United States, yet they espouse out-of-date and out-of-touch policies. They are dead wrong for 21st-century America. We’re going forward. We’re not going back.”

Pro-life Republican presidential candidate Caryl Fiorina is responding. She says Hillary Clinton is the real extremist, not pro-life Americans.

“Well, it’s outrageous. I mean, it’s an outrageous statement, and she will be called on it,” Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO, said Friday on Fox News.

The Washington Times has more on Fiorina’s reaction:

“But it’s also typical — it’s typical of Hillary Clinton; frankly, it’s typical of Democrats,” Ms. Fiorina said. “I mean, remember President Obama [has] compared anyone who opposed his Iranian deal, a terrible deal, to the hardliners in Iran chanting, ‘Death to America.’ This is typical.

“And what it tells us is that Hillary Clinton has no qualms about continuing to try and wage this supposed ‘war on women’ card as she runs for president,” she continued. “We ought to expect this. Democrats are continually describing Republicans as extreme when the truth is, it is Democrats who are extreme.

“They are extreme as she continues to defend Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood can no longer be defended, and yet Hillary Clinton is out there defending them,” Ms. Fiorina said. “It’s unclear that she’s ever had the courage to watch these videotapes, to actually see what Planned Parenthood is doing.

“So Hillary Clinton and her party are the extremists here on a whole series of issues, and her comparing any Republican to a terrorist is simply over the line,” Ms. Fiorina said.

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Wal-Mart has been reducing the number of hours employees work in some of its stores following a wage increase earlier this year, according to a report by Bloomberg.

The report says “regional executives told store managers at the retailer’s annual holiday planning meeting this month to rein in expenses by cutting worker hours they’ve added beyond those allocated to them based on sales projections.”

Bloomberg continued:

The request has resulted in some stores trimming hours from their schedules, asking employees to leave shifts early or telling them to take longer lunches, according to more than three dozen employees from around the U.S. The reductions started in the past several weeks, even as many stores enter the busy back-to-school shopping period

In February, Wal-Mart announced that it would raise its entry-level wage to $9 an hour. The wage increase took place in April.

Opponents of a minimum wage increase noted that Wal-Mart’s decision to cut employees’ hours in some of its stores came after the wage hike.

A spokesperson for Wal-Mart denied a correlation between the reduction in hours and the wage increase, attributing the reduction in hours to “overscheduling” at individual stores.

“Earlier this year Wal-Mart committed to investing an additional $1 billion in our associates through wages, training, scheduling and staffing,” Kory Lundberg, the director of national media relations at Wal-Mart, said in a statement provided to The Daily Signal.

“We see that investment resonating with our customers and associates through higher satisfaction and engagement scores,” Lundberg said. “As we head into the most important part of the year for any retailer, Wal-Mart is committed to continue improving the customer experience and will protect the investments necessary to achieve this goal, including staffing, wages and the addition of more than 8,000 new department managers and more than 3,500 Pick-Up department managers to our stores for the remainder of the year.

“The reduction in hours is taking place only in locations where managers have overscheduled workers, staffing the store for more time than they’ve been allotted. The reductions won’t affect efforts to better staff stores, shorten checkout lines, and improve cleanliness and stocking,” Lundberg continued.

James Sherk, senior policy analyst in labor economics at The Heritage Foundation, said “the government cannot mandate the creation of ‘good’ jobs.”

“Employers respond to wages that rise without offsetting increases in productivity by reducing the numbers or hours of their workforce,” Sherk said. “There is no such thing as a free lunch.”

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Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that people who want to come to the United States should learn English and adopt our values, because “immigration without assimilation is invasion.”

“One of the things I have been emphasizing, as the son of immigrants who came here legally, we need to insist on assimilation. In Europe, they’re not doing that. They have got huge problems. Immigration without assimilation is invasion. That can weaken our country,” Jindal said. “We don’t need to go down the path of Europe. Let’s insist on being the melting pot. Let’s forget this politically correct, left notion that we’re not a melting pot anymore.”
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Host John Dickerson asked Jindal, “Let me ask you a question about immigration, a topic that is much in conversation among Republicans. We know all Republicans candidates want to secure the border, but after that, there is the question of what to do with the undocumented workers who are in the United States.

“You said on CNN recently, you said, ‘I think American people will be pragmatic and compassionate about the people here.’ What does that mean about the 11 million, 12 million undocumented workers who are here now?” Jindal asked.

“I think the reason voters don’t want a comprehensive approach, a gang of eight approach, is we tried that in the ’80s. We were told, deal with it comprehensive, and we would get a secure border. That didn’t happen. That’s why I think it’s right to sequence these things. Secure the border first, and then we can have the discussion about the folks that are here, but the bottom line is this,” Jindal said.

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March for Life, which holds a pro-life rally every March in Washington, D.C., filed suit against three federal agencies last year, demanding an exemption from the mandate. It requires employers to provide insurance coverage for 20 FDA-approved contraceptives at no extra cost to the employee — including birth control pills March for Life and other pro-lifers believe are a form of abortion.

A D.C. District Court sided with March for Life Monday, signaling organizations that are not overtly religious can be exempted from the mandate, in addition to those which fall under a religious exemption put in place.

“If the purpose of the religious employer exemption is, as HHS states, to respect the anti-abortifacient tenets of an employment relationship, then it makes no rational sense-indeed, no sense whatsoever to deny March for Life that same respect,” the decision states.

The Obama administration formulated the religious exemption after a decisive defeat last year in a case against Hobby Lobby. Religious employers can exempted if they notify the Department of Health and Human Services or their insurance providers that they have religious objections to birth control coverage.

“The government should not be allowed to force organizations like the March for Life to have health insurance with drugs and devices that can cause an abortion,” March for Life President Jeanne Mancini said in a statement Monday. “We didn’t want to go to court but were backed into a corner and had no other options.”

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Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul said last week that he believes the “Black Lives Matter” movement should change their name – and tactics.
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During an interview with Sean Hannity last Wednesday, Paul said:

“I think they should change their name, maybe — if they were ‘All Lives Matter’ or ‘Innocent Lives Matter.’”

He added that bullying people off of a stage isn’t the right way for a movement to advance their message:

“[C]ommandeering the microphone and bullying people and pushing people out of the way I think really isn’t a way to get their message across.”

Paul went on to tout his experience in dealing with the politics and policies that “Black Lives Matter” activists protest against. He noted an appearance at historically black Howard University, as well as several appearances with members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Activists within the “Black Lives Matter” movement have sought to advance their message by attending, and often commandeering, the events of presidential candidates.

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David Daleiden — On August 27, Planned Parenthood released what they claimed was a “forensic analysis” report on CMP’s published investigative footage. In reality, the report is a pseudoscientific production by Fusion GPS, a political opposition-research company that has no forensic certifications. While the report, which contains multiple errors, set out to delegitimize CMP’s video evidence, it only provides evidence of the opposite: the report admits that “This analysis did not reveal widespread evidence of substantive video manipulation” and that it “shows no evidence of audio manipulation.”
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Planned Parenthood’s review of the undercover meetings with Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Dr. Mary Gatter, Dr. Savita Ginde, and Melissa Farrell identifies sections in the full footage of these conversations where bathroom breaks or waiting time between meetings were removed to protect the investigators. The Center for Medical Progress provides original recording files to law enforcement and official investigators, but endeavors to present our findings to the public in the most accessible way possible. This brief will review the specific cuts and other issues raised by the Planned Parenthood report.

Video 1: Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Senior Director of Medical Services, PPFA

The Planned Parenthood report notes that two different camera angles recorded the meeting with Dr. Nucatola. In the full footage of this conversation, the primary camera (Actor 1) is used throughout, until Actor 1 needed to use the restroom at encoded timestamp 14:32:07 (framecount ~038200). At this point, footage from the second camera (Actor 2) is supplemented so viewers can follow the conversation that continued between Dr. Nucatola and Actor 2, while Actor 1 uses the restroom. When Actor 1 returns, the primary camera footage does as well. The timestamp on the primary footage reads 14:37:43 when Actor 1 returns–the approximately 5.5 minute change in timestamp corresponds to the 5.5 minute discussion Actor 2 has alone with Dr. Nucatola.

At 14:38:06, Dr. Nucatola leaves to use the restroom, and returns at 14:41:08. The logistical discussion between the actors is not part of the conversation with Dr. Nucatola and like discussions between only the actors arriving and leaving the meeting, it is not included. Viewers following the conversation between Nucatola and the two actors hear the continuous dialog about using the restroom at these points in the video.

The bathroom breaks and actors’ logistics do not change Dr. Nucatola’s statements, and the brief change of camera footage allows the viewer to see and hear the full conversation with Dr. Nucatola.

Video 2: Dr. Mary Gatter, President of the Planned Parenthood Medical Directors’ Council, PPFA

Again, the Planned Parenthood report attempts to cast aspersions on the investigative footage because of the use of two cameras. In reality, the use of multiple cameras corroborates the scenes recorded and enhances the evidentiary value of the footage. CMP provides law enforcement and official investigators with the original files from all recording devices.

Each actor uses the restroom at the beginning of the meeting with Dr. Mary Gatter. While Actor 2 uses the restroom, Actor 1’s camera documents the beginning of the conversation with Dr. Gatter. When Actor 2 returns to the table and Actor 1 leaves to use the restroom at 12:04:53, the camera changes to Actor 2’s footage, and remains there for the rest of the conversation.

As in Video 1, the continuous dialogue around the camera transition makes it clear there is a bathroom break.

Video 3: Dr. Savita Ginde, VP and Medical Director, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains

The actors spent almost an entire work day at the Planned Parenthood facility shown in this video, with only a fraction of that time spent in conversation with Dr. Ginde. The full footage of their conversation with Dr. Ginde begins in a conference room meeting with her, and this conversation continues until the Planned Parenthood staff break for lunch at timestamp 10:27:07. The actors were not taken into the path lab until after abortions began and Planned Parenthood was making fetal tissue available for review at timestamp 11:01:40. The actors recorded several periods of “down-time” between abortion cases where they were alone in the path lab or in break rooms discussing logistics. Again, bathroom breaks and logistical discussions between only the actors are only presented to law enforcement and official investigators in order to protect the actors.

At 11:45:46, the Planned Parenthood so-called “forensic report” erroneously identifies a stop in the recording device. Dr. Ginde leaves the actors alone in a waiting room, and so the conversation footage resumes when Dr. Ginde returns for the one of the actors at timestamp 12:21:55.

Planned Parenthood also takes issue with two statements recorded in the dialogue: first, Dr. Ginde’s sad remark over a dismembered 11.6-week fetus that, “It’s a baby,” and second, the medical assistant’s excited exclamation that a 10-week aborted fetus is “another boy.” The Planned Parenthood report does not mark out by timestamp or framecount exactly where these statements occur in the recording, but only gives vague estimates of where they occur in the video run-time.

While the first remark from Dr. Ginde, at timestamp 11:05:07, is faint, careful listening makes the dialogue clear beginning at 11:04:52:

Actor 1: “Was that crack, was that the, just the little bits of the skull?”
Medical Assistant: “Mhm. I’m looking for–I guess we’re missing one leg. And a foot.”
Dr. Ginde: “It’s a baby.”

Dr. Ginde’s distinctive voice can be heard after the Medical Assitant references the leg and the foot of the baby, murmuring in a low, despondent tone, “It’s a baby,” and the bilabial “B” sound can be heard clearly at the end of the phrase. This is consistent with other remarks made by Dr. Ginde during the site visit, including her description of a 12-week aborted fetus at timestamp 13:54:50 as “war-torn.” The Medical Assistant also referred to the aborted 11.6 fetus as “cute” at 11:04:31, which elicited an inaudible response from Ginde.

At timestamp 14:08:29, the Planned Parenthood Medical Assistant exclaims, “And another boy!” when examining a 10-week aborted fetus. This same Medical Assistant referred to an 11.6-week aborted fetus as “cute,” frequently described looking for fetal extremities as “legs” and “feet,” and was also looking for “twins” in several of the abortion cases. The sex of fetuses was never brought up by the actors.

It is significant that Planned Parenthood singles these two statements out for special scrutiny: they are admissions from Planned Parenthood abortion workers about the violence inherent in their work. But the way the report focuses on them while simultaneously refusing to precisely flag them seems to indicate Planned Parenthood also has a guilty conscience for child-killing.

Video 4: Melissa Farrell, Director of Research, Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast

The Planned Parenthood report identifies a missing recording file from timestamp 07:46:47 to 08:15:15. This was due solely to human error, as the missing file, which begins at timestamp 07:46:48 and ends at 08:15:13, includes several key admissions from Farrell about PPGC’s arbitrary budgeting practices for tissue collection charges and willingness to modify abortion procedures to get more intact specimens (which even Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards has admitted). The missing clip has been supplemented here.

From 8:44:26 to 8:48:39 (mistakenly notated in the Planned Parenthood report as 8:44:39), Actor 1 uses the restroom while Farrell leaves the room to grab documents off of the printer. This is clear from the dialogue. Actor 2 also left to use the restroom during the same time. At 12:58:34, Farrell led the actors to a break room, and actors took the time to swap out recording equipment batteries and discuss logistics with each other. Farrell returns to take the actors to the clinic’s path lab at 13:50:18.

The Planned Parenthood report erroneously cites a clip of a “credit card” at 13:11:59 for the Farrell video, which is actually from the Gatter video.

Conclusion:

The Planned Parenthood report contains multiple erroneous statements and conclusions, yet by its own words finds no “substantive video manipulation” and “no evidence of audio manipulation.” CMP’s investigative video recordings are high-quality and reproducible evidence that can be provided to law enforcement and official investigators in original recording format.

quote:

HBO host Bill Maher challenged GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum in an interview on his show on Friday to explain why Maher, as an atheist, backs Pope Francis in his stance on climate change, and why Santorum, as a Roman Catholic, does not.
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“What I want to ask is, I mean, I’m not a Catholic, I’m an atheist,” Maher said. “But I like the pope better than you do. You’re saying the pope should stick to what he knows, and I find that ridiculous.”

Santorum answered Maher’s question by insisting that he does love the pope, and suggested that through his climate change speeches Francis is trying to “break down some barriers” and open up a conversation on the topic with people who might disagree with him on other issues.

“And number two, and this is even more important than the first, is there anything we can do about it? And the answer is, is there anything the United States can do about it? Clearly, no. Even folks who accept all of the science by the alarmists on the other side, recognize that everything that’s being considered by the United States will have almost — well, not almost, will have zero impact on it given what’s going on in the rest of the world,” the former Pennsylvania senator added.

Fulchrum posted:

Conservatives value hard work and providing for your family. Which they procve by saying hard workers don't seserve a living wage and leaving a smoking hellhole for the children.

quote:

In July, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker officially announced he was running for president of the United States. He said in a video announcement, “It’s time to take the successes we have created in Wisconsin and apply them to Washington. It’s time to restore the values that made our nation great.”

Many abortion opponents believe Walker would make a great president because he has gone to great lengths to de-fund Planned Parenthood and proved to be a champion for the unborn. In fact, BuzzFeed reports that the presidential hopeful has spent the last twenty years building an impressive pro-life record and working to cut funding for abortion facilities in his state.

Additionally, a headline in the 1993 Milwaukee Journal, “Support of abortion opponents is credited in Walker’s victory,” indicated that his views on abortion helped him win in previous elections. The headline was published after Walker received the Republican nomination in a primary to take a Wisconsin assembly seat. The pro-abortion Republican who ran against Walker in that race, Mary Jo Baas, said life has always been “an essential issue for him.”

She explained, “When everybody is Republican, and everybody wants lower taxes, and everybody wants school choice, and everybody wants economic development, it was an issue where he had — he was knowledgeable, he was active, he felt passionate about it, and it was at a time when the pro-life organizations could make a huge difference in the campaign.”

quote:

GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina has been discussing how the CNN debate rules put her at a disadvantage and could leave her out of the top 10, not making the main debate stage on September 16th at the next GOP presidential primary debate. Dr. Ben Carson’s campaign manager appears to agree with Fiorina on the debate rule predicament.
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“We think it’s ridiculous that Carly Fiorina isn’t on the debate,” Barry Bennett, GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson’s campaign manager, said to Politico. “She’s what, fifth? She should be on the main debate stage.”

“We don’t like how far back they’re going in the polls,” Bennett stated about CNN’s polling calculation method. “Why does anyone care where someone was in presidential preference polls [three months ago]?”

CNN has stated multiple times it is unable to change the debate rules since they were made public.

“Our criteria are totally appropriate and we have been absolutely transparent about them throughout. If the Fiorina campaign had an issue with them they could have raised it when we published them in May. They did not,” a CNN spokesperson previously explained to The Wall Street Journal. “Revising the criteria on the eve of the debate at the demand of and solely for the benefit of one particular candidate is not something we have done in the past, and we will not do it now.”

Aeka 2.0 posted:

Might as well add to the crazy, that last comment though, wow:

Fulchrum posted:

How did we get to the point where competent people don't get discriminated against because of their religion?

Aeka 2.0 posted:

Might as well add to the crazy, that last comment though, wow:

King Dopplepopolos posted:

Also, Valerie Jarrett isn't a Muslim. Not that it would matter, since religious tests are explicitly unconstitutional.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslimgovernment.asp

Radish posted:

EDIT: Is this stupid as hell "let's remember our armed forces on Labor Day" coming from somewhere since I've never heard it before but it seems to be at thing this year.

Scruff McGruff posted:

He seems to have completely missed the reason(s) why people wanted the flag removed...

VitalSigns posted:

Conservatives whining about the free market punishing bigotry will never stop being hilarious.

Klaus88 posted:

You're only following this guy because he provides such delightful fodder for the thread right?

Radish posted:

The soldier worship poo poo is already incredibly irritating but it's even more odious when they turn on actual soldiers (and not just the vague idea of ARE TROOPS) that step out of line and say something that contradicts right wing radio. Like pretty much everything they claim to support, it's really a way to have a positive face to their real love of being spiteful greedy assholes.

Soldiers are much more useful when they are being killed in some foreign land than being uncooperative and saying things that make middle America uncomfortable.

EDIT: Is this stupid as hell "let's remember our armed forces on Labor Day" coming from somewhere since I've never heard it before but it seems to be at thing this year.

VitalSigns posted:

The country is worse off I tell you. And don't give me any poo poo about the unemployment rate is lower than Bush's final year, the President's melanin count is holding steady at its highest level in US history!

Jurgan posted:

They are still calling Obama "Osama?" I thought that would have petered out once Osama died. Does anyone remember how he died? It seems to have slipped my mind...

Jurgan posted:

They are still calling Obama "Osama?" I thought that would have petered out once Osama died. Does anyone remember how he died? It seems to have slipped my mind...

Jurgan posted:

They are still calling Obama "Osama?" I thought that would have petered out once Osama died. Does anyone remember how he died? It seems to have slipped my mind...

Jurgan posted:

They are still calling Obama "Osama?" I thought that would have petered out once Osama died. Does anyone remember how he died? It seems to have slipped my mind...

ToxicSlurpee posted:

George Bush created the circumstances that led to it and personally trained the sniper that did it (who did it completely alone, mind you). Barack HUSSEIN Oblammo just took the credit.

Scruff McGruff posted:

He seems to have completely missed the reason(s) why people wanted the flag removed...

quote:

Today on the news, I saw a report that bothered me I guess....it was about a huge group of refugees or migrants (I have heard both names) at a train station in Hungary. This very large group were mostly men, young, fit looking etc. What bothered me is that aid groups had gathered food and water for these men, and what these men did was happily take the water and food from the aid workers (Red Cross) and then walked directly to the train tracks and threw the goods onto the track because the food was not "hallal" which is something to do with the way food/water is prepared for a person of the Muslim faith. Please don't destroy the things, give them back and tell the aid workers and police they should make things available to other needly people like the homeless maybe? Or a woman who has hungry or thirsty children.

quote:

There are other religions who might share the same beliefs as this lady, and this would not be an issue at all. Other arrangements would be made for people to get their marriage licences. I think that most know this to be true.

quote:

The Cdn media has turned this around so as to blame PM Harper for this.....it is a long story, but, even though the truth has come out, the media and the member of Parliament - not a Conservative - continue to perpetuate the misleading information and speaking my myself, I know it is being done

Imperialist Dog posted:

I think this is the video she is talking about :
https://youtu.be/3e6sIl5whsg

Uroboros posted:

Is that really the reason? Is there really some special water preparation method coming from a culture that originates in a historically water scarce environment?

Tequila25 posted:

It's more likely they are threatening to go on a hunger strike to protest a move by the Hungarian government to force them into a refugee camp.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/03/hungary-train-diverts-refugees-back-to-camp

Uroboros posted:

Is that really the reason? Is there really some special water preparation method coming from a culture that originates in a historically water scarce environment?

quote:

A large group of people was surrounded in a hot and cramped underpass leading out of the station, chanting “no camp, no camp”. Other passengers clashed with police and forced their way back on to the train to begin a standoff in the sweltering heat. Police brought water but many of the migrants refused to take the bottles, vowing to go on hunger strike.
Refugee crisis: what can you do to help?
Read more

Later, volunteers tried to offer them food but people refused to eat. “We don’t need food and water. Just let us go to Germany,” one said from an open train window.

nsaP posted:

My dad finally got on facebook after railing against it from the beginning and it's the worst thing ever. Just dumbass libertarian shares and he's the kind of person who it is pointless to engage because he is incapable of conceding a point, he just moves goalposts or changes subjects. The best you get out of him is that he changes his mind after the fact, then repeats your arguments back to you at a later date as he explains why he changed his mind.

blitzenluft posted:

ughsocialjustice posted:

Hello 911 I need to report a massacre

It’s hard to take Takei seriously when he supports the policies and party of a president who literally put him personally in an internment camp

Chimera-gui posted:

quote:

It’s hard to take Takei seriously when he supports the policies and party of a president who literally put him personally in an internment camp

Where do I even begin with this bullcrap?

quote:

If she had denied marriage certificates to an interracial couple, would people cheer her?

Jurgan posted:

Chimera-gui posted:

Where do I even begin with this bullcrap?

James Garfield posted:

When did George Takei come out in favor of Japanese-American internment?

(also Kim Davis supporters likely support the policies and party of a president who illegally sold weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran and supported the perpetrators of the Mayan genocide in Guatemala)

Tatum Girlparts posted:

Pretty much there's a tiny, slightly vocal, group (spoiler, 90% of them have no connection to the camps beyond reading about them) that have given him poo poo for not denouncing the government as an entity and supporting democrats because FDR was one.

I don't know WHY they think a man who's mainly known for being an actor and cool grandpa would be prime candidate for leading a mass denouncement of the US government, but there ya go.