Media Covers up Democrat-Backed Planned Parenthood’s Support for Infanticide

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

For almost as long as there have been two parties, there have been accusations of mainstream media bias. Conservatives know it’s real. Liberals insist it’s imagined. Bias is evident not only in how events are covered but also in what is covered—and more importantly what is not covered.

Consider two events from last week. First, in North Dakota the governor signed into law bills that would ban abortions when a fetal heartbeat is present and when the procedure is sought solely because of the baby’s genetics. The media, including most major outlets, went into a frenzy to stir up controversy, often casting pro-life conservatives in a negative light.

Then later in the week in Florida, lawmakers held a hearing about a bill to protect the lives of babies born during an attempted abortion procedure. The bill requires the abortionist to provide medical care to the newborn. It might seem obvious that a newborn should be cared for—but not to Planned Parenthood.

They sent a lobbyist to the Florida legislature to testify in opposition to the bill. Here are some excerpts between the legislators and the lobbyist, Alisa LaPolt Snow, published earlier in the Weekly Standard. They pretty much speak for themselves.

Rep. Jim Boyd: “If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?”

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Poll: Support Rising for Hillary Clinton in 2016

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Hillary Clinton has hit a new high in support for a potential presidential run.

Sixty-four percent of Democratic voters surveyed by Democratic firm Public Policy Polling (PPP) support the former secretary of State as the party’s nominee for president in 2016, with every other potential candidate trailing by huge margins. Vice President Biden, in second, got only 18 percent support.

Clinton has majority support among every age group polled, nearly every ethnic group and both men and women, as well as a majority of support from liberals and moderates.

But a Clinton run isn’t a sure thing, and if she decides against it, Biden’s a shoe-in for the nomination, taking 49 percent support to Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) 11 percent support. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo takes 10 percent support, and every other candidate is in single digits.

Clinton fares better than Biden against every potential GOP contender tested, leading all of them by margins ranging from four percentage points to seven. Among the top four GOP contenders, Biden leads Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Rand Paul (Ky.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), but by slighter margins than Clinton, and he trails New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie by nine percentage points.

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Two Female Marines Fail to Pass All-Male Infantry Course

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Photo Credit: Lance Cpl. Vincent White

Two female Marine lieutenants have failed in their bid to complete the Corps’ grueling, all-male Infantry Officer Course (IOC). The women’s recent washout after only a few days in the course follows the failure of two other female officers attempting to complete the same program in October.

The Corps now stands 0-4 in its search to find female Marines who have the physical strength and endurance to complete one of the most rigorous infantry schools in the military, located at the Quantico, Va., base.

Of 110 lieutenants in the first phase of the course, called the Combat Entrance Test, 14 failed, including the only two women, according to the Marine Corps Times.

“We will continue to solicit women to take part in the IOC program,” Marine Corps spokesman Capt. Richard Ulsh told The Washington Times. “I don’t know how [the failures] could stretch to mean something broader than what you’ve got.”

In January, then-Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, announced that the Pentagon had lifted a longtime ban on women serving in direct land combat jobs in infantry, armor and special operations units.

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ICE Union Hammers Gang of 8: Their Plan is ‘Amnesty First, then Enforcement’

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

During a Wednesday afternoon conference call, ICE agents union head Chris Crane hammered the so-called Gang of Eight and the Obama administration for supposedly failing to focus on enforcing immigration laws.

“The plan of the Gang of Eight appears to be legalization, or amnesty first, and then enforcement. That is a big problem for us,” Crane told reporters, noting that none of the immigration plans laid out so far has offered a framework for “stronger interior enforcement.”

He charged that those currently considering immigration reform are more focused on legalization than addressing illegal immigration.

The National ICE Council, Crane’s union of more than 7,000 ICE officers and staff, has been calling on the White House and the Gang of Eight to hear their concerns about immigration reform and the need for a focus on enforcement first.

Their requests for a meeting from both players have gone unanswered.

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USA Today: The War on Christians

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Photo Credit: AP

“Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world.” So asserted German Chancellor Angela Merkel late last year, causing a stir. Merkel echoed a concern expressed by then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who warned in a 2011 speech that Christians face a “particularly wicked program of cleansing in the Middle East, religious cleansing.”

Not ‘War on Christmas’

Now, this is not about clerks who say “Happy Holidays” or bans of nativity scenes in public schools. Merkel spoke of real persecution of hundreds of millions of Christians around the world. Indeed, a 2011 Pew Forum study found that Christians are harassed in 130 countries, more than any of the world’s other religions.

The just-released book Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians provides the gory details behind these statistics. Persecuted is a collaboration of the Hudson Institute’s Nina Shea, Paul Marshall and Lela Gilbert to catalog the human rights abuses visited upon Christian believers from North Korea to Mali. They define this persecution as Christians “who are tortured, raped, imprisoned, or killed for their faith.” It’s a worldwide phenomenon, but Shea points out a troubling acceleration in the cradle of Christianity’s birth: the Middle East and North Africa. As London Guardian columnist Rupert Shortt wrote in January, “The religious ecology of the Middle East looks more fragile than ever, as the Arab Spring gives way to Christian Winter.”

Tragically, Christians have been forced to abandon homelands they have occupied for thousands of years. Up to two-thirds of Christians have fled Iraq in the past ten years to escape massacres, church burnings and constant death threats. Many Christians fled to Syria, where they are experiencing persecution anew. In Iran, U.S. pastor Saeed Abedini has been sentenced to eight years in prison for preaching Christianity.

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Is Disability the New Welfare?

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Photo Credit: National Review

The government in Britain recently did something interesting.

It asked everyone receiving an “incapacity benefit” — through a disability program slowly being phased out under new reforms — to submit to a medical test to confirm they were too disabled to work. A third of recipients (878,000 people) didn’t even bother and dropped out of the program rather than be examined. Of those tested, more than half (55 percent) were found fit for work, and a quarter were found fit for some work.

But that’s Britain, where there’s a long tradition of gaming the dole. Americans would never think of taking advantage of the taxpayers or misleading the government. Well, except for the couple of dozen people who have pleaded guilty to scamming the Long Island Rail Road’s federal disability system in a $1 billion fraud scheme. A billion bucks would pay for a lot of White House tours.

Though hardly isolated, the LIRR scandal is an obvious black-and-white case of criminality. The real problem resides in a grayer area.

In 1960, when vastly more Americans were involved in physical labor of some kind, 0.65 percent of workforce participants between the ages of 18 and 64 were receiving Social Security disability-insurance payments. Fifty years later, in a much healthier America, that number has grown nearly nine-fold to 5.6 percent. In 1960, 134 Americans were working for every officially recognized disabled worker. Five decades later that ratio fell to roughly 16 to 1.

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Groups Led by Inside Trader, Child Abuser got Obamacare Co-op Loans

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Photo Credit: AP

Federal officials approved Obamacare loans totaling $127 million last year to groups led by individuals whose backgrounds included an insider trading conviction and another with a long history of child sexual abuse, The Washington Examiner has learned.

The loans — which must be repaid at a future date — are to fund health insurance co-operative startups in Louisiana and Maine. They will compete with private sector health insurance providers under a $2 billion Obamacare initiative to fund 24 co-op startups nationwide.

Both the Maine and Louisiana co-ops are among 13 under investigation by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee headed by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

In the Maine case, federal officials approved a $62 million loan to Maine Community Health Options even though its president had recently committed suicide after state police accused the co-op’s president of molesting teenage boys for decades.

Despite extensive media coverage of the scandal, federal officials approved the loan five months before Maine State Police made public a 104-page report detailing the abuse allegations over a 36-year period.

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Law Schools Sued for Misleading Applicants About Job Prospects

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Numerous lawsuits have been filed against law schools across the nation by former graduates who allege that the law schools deceived them about the success rates of their former students.

Five of the nearly 20 lawsuits have been filed against California schools, four of which are Southwestern, Golden Gate University, the University of San Francisco and San Diego’s Thomas Jefferson and California Western schools of law, all of which charge roughly $40,000 per year in tuition.

Some graduates have taken low-paying jobs such as working in hourly jobs in department stores and restaurants, or finding work in temporary or part-time legal positions. Southwestern Law School, for example, once asserted that 97% of its graduates found jobs within nine months of graduation.

Some of the reasons for the dearth of job prospects for newly-graduated lawyers are:

The advent of computer availability for legal work, including as substitution for law libraries, so that much work can stay in-house at firms which once farmed the work out, Internet companies that offer litigants legal documents and help, The simple staggering number of lawyers in the market. Joseph Dunn, chief executive of the State Bar of California, said, “I don’t think any of them rival the situation we are seeing today. The legal community in all 50 states is being dramatically impacted.”

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School Voucher Ruling Supports Religious Freedom

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Photo Credit: Urban Cure

As the nation has focused on the Supreme Court hearings on the constitutionality of same sex marriage, news from the state of Indiana could prove far more important regarding the nations future.

The Indiana Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled unanimously, 5-0, that the states school voucher program — signed into law in 2011 and the most expansive school voucher program in the nation — does not violate the states constitution.

Those who challenged the law argued that the voucher program is unconstitutional because it allows public funds to be used for religious education. Not so, said the court. The voucher goes to the families, not the schools. It is the parents who decide how to spend it.

Why do I draw connection between the U.S. Supreme Courts review of same-sex marriage and this voucher decision in Indiana? And why do I suggest that the Indiana decision may be more important to the nations future than whatever the Supreme Court decides on same-sex marriage?

Same-sex marriage sits before the Supreme Court today because of the dramatic change in public opinion over recent years regarding the legitimacy and morality of same-sex marriage and homosexual relations. General public opinion is far more accepting today of both than it has been in the past.

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Wisconsin Among Worst for Business Taxes, Now Considers Multimillion Circus Bailout

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Wisconsin led the nation in collective bargaining reform for public employees in 2011, but the state’s current tax and regulatory climate led the Tax Foundation to recently declare Wisconsin among the worst in the country for business taxes. But while lawmakers mull over how best to reduce taxes and streamline regulations, they are being asked by one state agency to spend $3.7 million on a circus museum…

Yes, Wisconsin taxpayers may have to spend millions of dollars to bailout a cash-strapped circus museum.

The proposed state budget under consideration by lawmakers is the largest in the state’s history. Included in its various proposals are provisions that would add 710 new employees to state government. That’s a jumbo-jet and a half of new state workers complete with pensions and health care plans financed by taxpayers. Hardly a small irony after Governor Scott Walker balanced his first budget in 2011 by forcing state workers to contribute more to their health insurance and pension plans.

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