Health Director who Approved Obama Birth Certificate Dies in Plane Crash (+video)

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Photo Credit: NBC

Photo Credit: NBC

The health director who approved the release of President Obama’s birth certificate has died in a plane crash, Hawaiian officials said Thursday.

Loretta Fuddy died after the Cessna Grand Caravan aircraft she was travelling on went down shortly after leaving Kalaupapa Airport at around 3:15 p.m. local time (10:15 a.m. ET) on Wednesday.

The other eight people on board were rescued, Richard Schuman, president of Makani Kai Air, told NBC News early Thursday, adding that that there was no indication as to why the plane had crashed.

Fuddy hit the headlines two years ago when she approved a waiver request allowing Obama to access certified copies of his birth certificate, signed by the delivery doctor, Obama’s mother and the local registrar. His mother, then 18, signed her name (Stanley) Ann Dunham Obama.

So-called “birthers” opposed to Obama including real estate mogul Donald Trump had long questioned why Obama hadn’t ensured the long form was released.

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Obama’s Popularity Slide has Made his Coalition Dangerously Shallower

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Photo Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty

Photo Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty

“[T]he entire concept of realignments/permanent alignments, which underlay much of the misbegotten analysis of the 2008 elections, is bankrupt and should be abandoned.”

So wrote RealClearPolitics’ Sean Trende in his 2012 book, The Lost Majority. One of the book’s main theses was that “the permanent majority” — that great white whale hunted and claimed by both parties over the last decade (and long before that) — is an unsustainable illusion in the long run.

Few pundits heeded Trende’s warning after the 2012 election. The editors of The Week made an argument typical of the moment when they wrote that Obama’s coalition of “white liberals, blacks, Latinos, younger voters, blue-collar workers, and moderate women … has lots of room to grow, whereas Mitt Romney’s core base — much older and whiter — is doomed to shrink.”

The flaw in this thinking lies in the nature of Obama’s coalition. As Trende notes (writing of the 2008 election), Obama’s coalition is actually a narrower one than Bill Clinton had, but its much deeper margins of victory among its constituent groups amply made up for that, delivering Obama two majority victories.

Obama obtained his decisive yet modest four-point victory margin in 2012 by running up unusually large (and in some cases historic) margins among Hispanics (44 points), blacks (87 points), moderates (15 points), the young (23 points), the poor (28 points), women (11 points) and those who never attend church (28 points). Not all Democratic candidates — even strong ones — can replicate many of these results.

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North Korea Executes Kim Jong Un’s Uncle

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Photo Credit: AP/XINHUA

Photo Credit: AP/XINHUA

North Korea announced Thursday it had executed the uncle of leader Kim Jong Un, declaring him a traitor who tried to overthrow the state.

The announcement came only days after Pyongyang announced through state media that Jang Song Thaek — long considered the country’s No. 2 power — had been removed from all his posts because of allegations of corruption, drug use, gambling, womanizing and leading a “dissolute and depraved life.”

State news agency KCNA said a tribunal examined Jang’s crimes, including “attempting to overthrow the state by all sorts of intrigues and despicable methods with a wild ambition to grab the supreme power of our party and state.”

The report called him “a traitor to the nation” and “worse than a dog.”

National Security Council spokesman Patrick Ventrell said that there was no reason to doubt the report of Jang’s death and if true, it illustrated North Korea’s “extreme brutality.”

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Officials: Air Strike Kills 15 Civilians in Yemen by Mistake

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Fifteen people on their way to a wedding in Yemen were killed in an air strike after their party was mistaken for an al Qaeda convoy, local security officials said on Thursday.

The officials did not identify the plane in the strike in central al-Bayda province, but tribal and local media sources said that it was a drone.

“An air strike missed its target and hit a wedding car convoy, ten people were killed immediately and another five who were injured died after being admitted to the hospital,” one security official said.

Five more people were injured, the officials said.

The United States has stepped up drone strikes as part of a campaign against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), regarded by Washington as the most active wing of the militant network.

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John Boehner Fed Up With ‘Ridiculous’ Tea Party Intransigence on Budget

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Photo Credit: ABC News

Photo Credit: ABC News

House Speaker John Boehner blasted outside groups for their criticism of the bipartisan budget deal, delivering an unusually sharp rebuke today to tea party and conservative activists while signaling he has had just about enough of their intransigence.

“They’re using our members and they’re using the American people for their own goals,” Boehner said, his voice rising with anger during a news conference at the Capitol today. “This is ridiculous. Listen, if you are for more deficit reduction, you are for this agreement.”

From Boehner, it was a rare and pointed public dressing-down of Club for Growth, Heritage Action, the Koch Brothers and other conservative groups that have urged Republicans to oppose the budget deal. Boehner openly questioned the motives of such groups, demonstrating a far more aggressive posture than he usually takes.

In response to Boehner’s comments, Club for Growth President Chris Chocola said his group will still stand with lawmakers who oppose the deal.

“We stand with Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Tom Coburn, Rand Paul, members of the Republican Study Committee and every other fiscal conservative who opposes the Ryan-Murray deal,” Chocola said in a statement.

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Budget Deal a Step Backward: Opposing View

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Photo Credit: T.J. Kirkpatrick, Getty Images

Photo Credit: T.J. Kirkpatrick, Getty Images

While imperfect, the sequester has proved to be an effective tool in reducing base discretionary spending. Nonetheless, conservatives have expressed a willingness to alter the budget caps established by the 2011 debt ceiling deal in exchange for immediate and substantive structural reforms that significantly reduce spending and address the real drivers of our debt.

Unfortunately, the budget agreement struck by Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Patty Murray is a step backward:

First, it represents an immediate increase in federal spending. Under the deal, discretionary spending would rise to $1.012 trillion in 2014 and $1.014 trillion in 2015, a $63 billion total increase (though it does little to provide a real and sustained fix for President Obama’s mismanagement of defense). This is a significant achievement for the president, who believes that government spending is a panacea to America’s economic woes.

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U.S. Suspends Aid to Syrian Rebels

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Mideast Syria_660_APThe Obama administration is cutting off aid to rebels in northern Syria amid concerns that it could fall into the hands of Al Qaeda-tied militants.

The White House confirmed Wednesday that the U.S. has suspended delivery of non-lethal assistance to rebels in the north. Britain reportedly has followed suit.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest cited concerns about reports that Islamist fighters seized buildings belonging to Syria’s Supreme Military Council.

“We’re obviously concerned by those reports,” he said.

Earnest said the U.S. government is consulting with the Supreme Military Council, and humanitarian aid will continue. Earnest stressed that the administration’s policy is to support “elements of the opposition that are moderate, that are committed to respecting basic human rights.”

He said: “That has been a challenge from the very beginning, both to identify the moderate elements of the opposition and to provide them the support that they need.”

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Congressional Staffers Told Not to Trust ObamaCare Site Info

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Congressional staffers were warned Wednesday not to rely on information provided by the ObamaCare exchange website, in an email alert informing them they might not be enrolled for coverage even if they technically signed up.

The “very important” message, sent to Capitol Hill officials Wednesday afternoon, is the latest sign that the government has concerns about the reliability of the system. Despite improvements in the basic operation of the exchange websites, and increased enrollment, there are lingering concerns about whether those signing up will actually be covered on Jan. 1.

“Please DO NOT ASSUME you are covered unless you have seen the Confirmation Letter from the Disbursing Office!” the email to staffers said.

The email urged staffers who have signed up via the DC Health Link — the health care exchange for the District of Columbia — to double check with the office that they’re enrolled.

“Do NOT rely on your ‘My Account’ page or other correspondence from DCHL,” the message said.

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Yale University “Beyond Human Personhood” Symposium: Christian Worldview is “Abominable”

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Photo Credit: LifeSite News

Photo Credit: LifeSite News

I am here at Yale University for the last day of the “Beyond Human Personhood” Symposium. As National Field Director for Personhood USA, I was asked by my superiors to attend to see if I could garner any insight in how a leftist worldview approaches the effort of convincing our culture to accept personhood for non-human actors such as: elephants, dolphins, great apes, artificial intelligences and extra-terrestrials.

I was a little surprised to find a modicum of common ground as I observed their intense passion to promote their worldview. I can admire their sacrifice and commitment to what they hold as the true nature of things. But I was wholly unprepared for the moral revulsion I felt as they described their overall agenda. They openly admitted that their goal is to “animalize” mankind as just another animal in the zoo we call earth. Their godless evolutionary pre-suppositions demand this. “Speciesism” was mentioned quite often—rightly accusing the Christian worldview of elevating all mankind as being “created in the image of God” and setting man apart from the other creatures of earth by placing all of God’s creation under mankind to act as steward “over the garden”.

Countless speakers decried human exceptionalism and Christianity’s role in promoting a worldview that demoted animals to a status under man’s “dominion.” As I mentioned earlier, I was struck by the sheer number of references to the early church fathers and various quotes from Christian theologians. This was a crowd who knew their church history and had made a conscious decision to reject the good news of Christ’s incarnation, death and resurrection for our soul’s sakes. And yes … there was a discussion on ensoulment and the fact that Christians denied ensoulment to non-humans. Again, I want to emphasize how unprepared I was to encounter such a high level of theological content, not to mention that it was all directed at me.

At first I thought that surely there were those in the audience that might question some of the presuppositions that were being openly proclaimed, perhaps a philosophy student with an inquiring mind who could connect the dots—particularly in the area of relegating man to the same level as other animals, thereby denigrating human life and dignity. Sadly, I didn’t find a single individual in a crowd of a 100 who spoke out against the obvious policy implications that these ideas have.

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Studies: Some Cancer Treatments Can be Skipped

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Gerry Broome

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Gerry Broome

Tens of thousands of women each year might be able to skip at least some of the grueling treatments for breast cancer – which can include surgery, heavy chemo and radiation – without greatly harming their odds of survival, new research suggests.

The research is aimed at curbing overtreatment, a big problem in cancer care. Treatments help many women beat the disease, but giving too many or ones that aren’t really needed causes unnecessary expense, trauma and lifelong side effects, such as arm swelling and heart troubles. Radiation can even raise the risk of new cancers.

Several studies presented Wednesday at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, an international conference on the disease, identify groups of patients who might be able to safely forgo certain treatments.

One found that many older women can skip radiation after surgery for early-stage tumors. Two others suggest that surgery may not help patients whose cancer has already spread widely. A fourth study tested a “light chemo” combination that could become a new standard of care.

The trend is “less and less therapy” for certain cancer types, said one conference leader, Dr. C. Kent Osborne of Baylor College of Medicine.

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