Benjamin Carson on 2016: If Called, He’d Run

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In one speech at the National Prayer Breakfast last month, pediatric neurosurgeon Benjamin Carson went from political unknown to conservative darling, and now he’s talking about a possible presidential bid in 2016. At least he’s not ruling it out, according to an interview he gave to The New York Times.

“Certainly if a year-and-a-half went by and there was no one on the scene and people are still clamoring, I would have to take that into consideration,” the 61-year-old, world-renowned physician told the newspaper, adding: “I would never turn my back on my fellow citizens.”

Report: Obamacare Pushes Premiums Up 200%
Carson’s speech at the Feb. 7 prayer breakfast, in which he denounced President Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms along with moves to increase taxes on the rich, went viral on YouTube and led to TV appearances on Fox News. His instant celebrity status has helped sales of his latest book, “America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great,” to skyrocket.

Carson, director of the Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, revealed to the Times that he has long been told he could have a career in politics based on his personal story.

He was born into poverty in Detroit and raised by a single mother, who encouraged him to excel academically. Carson went on to graduate from Yale University and the University of Michigan Medical School before finding fame through his pioneering work separating conjoined twins.

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Chicago To Close 54 Schools To Address $1B Deficit

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Tens of thousands of Chicago students, parents and teachers learned Thursday their schools were on a long-feared list of 54 the city plans to close in an effort to stabilize an educational system facing a huge budget shortfall.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel says the closures are necessary because too many Chicago Public School buildings are half-empty, with 403,000 students in a system that has seats for more than 500,000. But opponents say the closures will further erode troubled neighborhoods and endanger students who may have to cross gang boundaries to attend school. The schools slated for closure are all elementary schools and are overwhelmingly black and in low-income neighborhoods.

CPS officials say money being spent to keep underutilized schools open could be better used to educate students elsewhere as the district deals with a $1 billion budget deficit. About 30,000 students will be affected by the plan, with about half that number moving into new schools.

“Every child in every neighborhood in Chicago deserves access to a high quality education that prepares them to succeed in life, but for too long children in certain parts of Chicago have been cheated out of the resources they need to succeed because they are in underutilized, under-resourced schools,” said district CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett. “As a former teacher and a principal, I’ve lived through school closings and I know that this will not be easy, but I also know that in the end this will benefit our children.”

As word of the closures trickled out, parents and teachers reacted with anger and shock, some even crying. Sandra Leon said she got a tearful call from her grandchildren’s kindergarten teacher saying the school was on the list to be closed. Her two grown children also attended the school, and Leon wiped her eyes as she waited outside for her grandchildren.

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Senate Gun Bill Would Expand Background Checks

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Gun control legislation the Senate debates next month will include an expansion of federal background checks for firearms buyers, Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday in a victory for advocates of gun restrictions.

The announcement underscores that Democrats intend to take an aggressive approach in the effort to broaden the checks, currently required for transactions involving federally licensed firearms dealers but not private sales at gun shows or online.

President Barack Obama and many supporters of curbing guns consider an expansion of the system to private gun sales to be the most effective response lawmakers could take in the wake of December’s elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn. The system is designed to keep guns from criminals, people with serious mental problems and others considered potentially dangerous.

The overall gun measure will also include legislation boosting penalties for illegal gun trafficking and modestly expanding a grant program for school security, said Reid, D-Nev. Its fate remains uncertain, and it will all but certainly need Republican support to survive.

Reid said that during Congress’ upcoming two-week break, he hopes senators will strike a bipartisan compromise on broadening background checks. Without a deal, he indicated the gun bill would include a stricter version approved this month by the Senate Judiciary Committee and authored by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., expanding the system to virtually all private gun transactions with few exceptions.

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Bachmann: Obamacare ‘Literally Kills’ People (+video)

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Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said on the House floor Thursday that Obamacare would kill women, children and senior citizens — “literally.”…

“That’s why we’re here: Because we’re saying let’s repeal this failure before it literally kills women, kills children, kills senior citizens,” Bachmann said. “Let’s not do that. Let’s love people. Let’s care about people. Let’s repeal it now while we can.”

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Crazy World: Pope Francis May Push Gay Civil Unions, American Academy Of Pediatrics Says Gay Marriage Good for Kids

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Pope Francis pushed civil unions for gays in 2010 as cardinal

By Cheryl K. Chumley. Gay rights supporters may have found a friend in Pope Francis.

Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio — now Pope Francis — came out in support of civil unions for gay couples in 2010, Newser reports. It was during a time of spiritual chaos in Argentina, as the church there was battling attempts to legalize gay marriage. And Cardinal Bergoglio came forward with what he described as the “lesser of two evils” solution, Newser reports.

“He wagered on a position of greater dialogue with society,” his authorized biographer says, in the Newser report. He publicly criticized the gay marriage bill winding through Argentina’s legislature, but quietly supported same-sex union rights.

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Gay marriage is good for kids: American Academy of Pediatrics.

By Cheryl Wetzstein. The nation’s largest pediatricians’ group said Thursday that it supports gay marriage, noting that, to a child, the parents’ sexual orientation is not as important as other elements related to family well-being.

If a child has two living and capable parents who want to marry, it is in the best interests of the child that legal and social institutions allow and support the parents to do so, “irrespective of their sexual orientation,” the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) said in its new policy statement.

Therefore, AAP “supports marriage equality for all capable and consenting adults, including those who are of the same gender, as a means of guaranteeing all federal and state rights and benefits and long-term security for their children.”

Adoption placements and foster parenting also should be conducted without regard to sexual orientation of the parents, the academy added.

The announcement comes less than a week before the U.S. Supreme Court considers two cases that will determine whether the federal Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8, which each define marriage as the union of one man and one woman, are constitutional.

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So Much for Iraqi Freedom: Christians, Churches Disappearing From Iraq Since US Invasion

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The head of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq says that the number of Christian houses of worship there has dwindled alarmingly in the decade since the U.S. invaded and ousted Saddam Hussein from power.

There are just 57 Christian churches in the entire country, down from more than 300 as recently as 2003, Patriarch Louis Sako told Egyptian-based news agency MidEast Christian News. The churches that remain are frequent targets of Islamic extremists, who have driven nearly a million Christians out of the land, say human rights advocates.

“The last 10 years have been the worst for Iraqi Christians because they bore witness to the biggest exodus and migration in the history of Iraq,” William Warda, the head of the Hammurabi Human Rights Organization told the news agency.

Many Christians live in the provinces of Baghdad, Nineveh, and Kirkuk, and Dohuk and Erbil, which are both in the autonomous region of Kurdistan. Warda said some 1.4 million Christians lived in Iraq prior to Hussein’s ouster. Under the democratically-elected government that now oversees the war-torn, but oil-rich nation, Islamic extremists have been able to operate more freely.
“More than two-thirds [of Christians] have emigrated,” Warda noted.

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Global Persecution Of Christians Ignored By Obama Admin (+video)

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Nina Shea, Director of the Center for Religious Freedom and a Hudson Institute Fellow, told Breitbart’s “Uninvited” panel at CPAC on Saturday that “religious persecution is the gravest human rights crisis of our day.” She added that “Christians are as a group the most persecuted, out of sheer numbers, across the world. This means they are being killed, tortured, imprisoned and eradicated …sent into exile for their beliefs.”

“This is happening in three types of countries,” she said. “Those with a remnant Communist country, like North Korea and China, some nationalist countries like Burma and Eritrea, and then in the Muslim world …where Islamism is on the rise.” In those Muslim countries, she said, “persecution . . . is intensifying, and it is spreading.

The crisis of global persecution of Christians has been largely ignored by the mainstream media. Ms. Shea told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview on Tuesday that “since A.M. Rosenthal at the New York Times passed away [in 2006], this issue has not been covered at the level it deserves, so I was very happy that Breitbart gave me the opportunity on the panel to promote the issue of global persecution of Christians.” Rosenthal, the former executive editor and columnist at the Times from 1977 to 1999, wrote dozens of columns on the problem of global Christian persecution in the 1990s.

Ms. Shea pointed to several recent examples of violent persecution of Christians in the Muslim world. “Last week alone,” she said, “we saw in Libya a Coptic Christian from Egypt tortured to death. Fifty of his co-religionists were imprisoned and some are still there.”

Ms. Shea’s complete remarks to “The Uninvited” panel can be seen in this video clip:

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The Epic Gun Control Testimony You’ve Been Waiting For: ‘The Constitution Did Not Guarantee Public Safety, It Guaranteed Liberty’

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How do Connecticut residents feel about the crackdown on the Second Amendment? Well, there are people from both sides making passionate arguments on the issue, however, one gentleman last week was able to make a particularly persuasive case against more gun control and in favor of the U.S. Constitution.

Meet Robert Steed, a resident of Vernon, Conn. who took three days straight off work to attend several gun control hearings in Connecticut. On March 14, Steed was more “aggravated” than usual with lawmakers and he let them know it in his fiery testimony, telling them that they were “coloring outside the lines of constitutional parameters.”

“This is the third day I’ve taken off of work to come here to, like so many of the rest of us, to plead with you for us to keep our guns because of some wing-nut in Newtown, Connecticut,” he said. “If that isn’t inherently wrong, I don’t know what is. That these bills are even in proposed form is scary enough. That any of you could possibly be undecided is scary enough. What are you looking at?”

He went on: “I can’t for the life of me understand how this state can have as many gun laws on the books as it does and have members of its Legislature need to take firearms 101. And as far as what I felt were potshots taken at the NRA, they’ve done more for gun safety– they’ll do more for gun safety this weekend than this committee will do in your careers.”

Connecticut will be the next state set to tackle new gun control measures is Connecticut, the same state where the tragic Newtown massacre occurred. On Tuesday, a key committee of the state’s General Assembly unanimously approved expanding criminal background checks. On Wednesday, lawmakers were set to discuss expanding the state’s current ban on so-called “assault weapons” to include even more firearms as well as additional magazine limits and universal background checks.

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Netanyahu Jokes To Obama: You Seem To Have ‘Incestuous Relationship’ With Media (+video)

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President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu had a light-hearted moment when Obama introduced his chief foreign policy speechwriter Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes. Pointing at Rhodes, Obama said to Netanyahu, “Just remember that anything offensive that I say, it’s because of him.”…

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Minn. Legislature Can’t Answer 11-Year-Old’s Question: ‘Which Parent Do I Not Need – My Mom Or My Dad?’ (+video)

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Minnesota state legislators considering a same-sex marriage bill for the state did not have an answer to an 11-year-old girl’s question on which parent is not needed.

“Since every child needs a mom and a dad to be born, I don’t think we can change that children need a mom and a dad. I believe God made it that way,” Grace Evans, 11, said before the Minnesota House Committee on Civil Law last week. “I know some disagree, but I want to ask you this question: Which parent do I not need – my mom or my dad?”

She paused for eight seconds as the legislators on the committee sat silent. Evans then said, “I’ll ask again, which parent do I not need – my mom or my dad?” She paused again, this time for 13 seconds of silence from state lawmakers.

Evans concluded, saying, “I hope that you can see that every child needs a mom and a dad. Please don’t change your law on marriage to say otherwise.” Nevertheless, the House committee voted in favor of the gay marriage bill and sent it to the full House. A similar bill is also before the state Senate.

Evans told legislators that her mom and dad each provide something unique to her life. “Even though I’m only 11 years old, I know that everyone deserves to have a mom and a dad,” Evans said. “If you change the law to say two moms and two dads can get married, it would take away something very important for children like me across the state.

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