Photo Credit: LifeSiteNews
But that’s not the only conflict the questionnaire presents.
At the same time that Judge Timothy S. Black was president of Planned Parenthood, he also served on the board of a group called Pro-Kids Inc.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Fox News
A new tape has surfaced showing Gruber, once again, claiming the health care law’s authors took advantage of the “stupid” American public.
The tape, played on Fox News’ “The Kelly File,” showed Gruber speaking at an October 2013 event at Washington University in St. Louis.
Referring to the so-called “Cadillac tax” on high-end health plans, he said: “They proposed it and that passed, because the American people are too stupid to understand the difference.”
Gruber specifically was referring to the way the “Cadillac tax” was designed — he touted their plan to, instead of taxing policy holders, tax the insurance companies that offered them. He suggested that taxing individuals would have been politically unpalatable, but taxing the companies worked because Americans didn’t understand the difference.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Fox News
That’s the crux of a controversy surrounding the ROTC program at Wheaton College, one of the nation’s most prominent Christian schools.
The U.S. Army says they have launched a review of ROTC policies nationwide after the Military Religious Freedom Foundation raised concerns about an ROTC assignment listing for an assistant professor of military science at Wheaton.
The MRFF noted that the person hired “must be of Christian faith.”
“While Wheaton is a private Christian college, and can impose a religious test on its own faculty members, it cannot impose that same religious test on the faculty members provided by the U.S. Army for its ROTC program, and the U.S. Army unequivocally cannot require a religious test for any ROTC assignment, regardless of the religious preference of the college at which that ROTC assignment exists,” MRFF founder Mikey Weinstein wrote in a letter sent in November to Secretary of the Army John McHugh.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Reuters
A Russian diplomat who heads the United Nations’ drug policy office reportedly chided U.S. states for legalizing recreational marijuana and vowed to take up his concerns with officials in Washington — in the latest incident of a U.N. official meddling in local U.S. affairs.
In response, one American advocacy group suggested the U.N. agency has no authority here, and has outlived its usefulness.
Yury Fedotov, director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, addressed the ballot measures on Wednesday, on the heels of last week’s midterm elections. Last Tuesday, Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C., voters approved measures allowing marijuana use – following the pot path blazed by Colorado and Washington state.
But according to Reuters, Fedotov told reporters that the moves defy international drug “conventions.”
“I don’t see how [the laws] can be compatible with existing conventions,” he reportedly said, claiming he would take it up with State Department and U.N. officials next week.
Read more from this story HERE.
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Photo Credit: M.Scott Mahaskey / POLITICO
By MICHELLE R. SMITH.
A graduate student has sued a textile company for refusing to hire her for a two-month internship because she uses medical marijuana to treat frequent and debilitating migraine headaches, a decision her lawyer calls discrimination.
Christine Callaghan, who is studying textiles at the University of Rhode Island, sued Westerly-based Darlington Fabrics Corp. and its parent, the Moore Company, on Wednesday. The Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Callaghan, said it believes it’s the first lawsuit of its kind in the state.
A lawyer for the company, Timothy Cavazza, said it had not yet been served with the lawsuit and it was company policy not to comment on litigation. He added that they were confident they acted in compliance with state and federal law and that the lawsuit would be dismissed.
Carly Iafrate, the attorney who filed the lawsuit for Callaghan, said if employers are allowed to discriminate against medical marijuana patients, then its legalization would become “an empty promise.”
“People with disabilities simply cannot be denied equal employment opportunities on the basis of the type of medication required to treat their particular condition,” she said.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: AFP
Two weeks later, California Attorney General Kamala appealed, asking for the full 11-judge panel to hear and reverse the decision. Her request for appeal was joined by The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
On November 12 the Ninth Circuit rejected Harris’ appeal.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Free Enterprise
The EPA’s inspector general plucked a few charges out of those made by the office from October 2012 to April 2014 to review. Of the $62,012 charged by workers, $36,488 were improper, according to the review titled, “Spending Taxpayer Dollars: Ineffective Oversight of Purchase Cards Resulted in Improper Purchases at EPA OIG.”
The IG found no illegal purchases, but said that many were made by IG workers who lacked the authority. Several purchases weren’t cleared by bosses, records weren’t retained and in two unidentified cases, sales taxes weren’t recovered; Uncle Sam doesn’t pay taxes.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: TownHall
The program is an expansion of smaller programs at farmers markets throughout the country. The Crossroads Farmer’s Market was the recipient of a $5,000 grant from the National Watermelon Association, and used that money to redeem SNAP funds for double their value in the market. (A person would redeem 15 dollars of SNAP funds from their EBT card for 30 dollars worth of tokens to spend in the market.) Another program located in Harlem and the South Bronx gives SNAP recipients four additional “HealthBucks” coupons for fruits and vegetables for every ten dollars of SNAP funds spent at a farmer’s market.
The program has received support from both sides of the aisle, according to NPR:
He invited one of Michigan’s senators — Democrat Debbie Stabenow — to see Double Up Food Bucks for herself. And last year, Stabenow, who is chairwoman of the Senate’s Agriculture Committee, proposed including it in the so-called farm bill.
Read more from this story HERE.
A robotic probe has landed on a comet, in an unprecedented moment for space exploration that could provide a trove of insights into what comets are made of and how they behave.
Photo Credit: ESA/NASA – SOHO/LASCO
Rocket scientists at the European Space Agency’s mission control here erupted in cheers, as they received the first signal that the probe that was released from the Rosetta spacecraft had touched down more than 300 million miles away from earth on the forbidding landscape of a small comet known as 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
There were even more cheers, hugs and handshakes when other signals suggested it had done so safely.
Photo Credit: ESA/Rosetta/Philae/CIVA
The landing, first envisaged more than 20 years ago, marks the crowning moment of Rosetta’s decadelong cruise through the solar system to get up close and personal with a comet. During its 4 billion mile journey on a track to meet the comet, Rosetta bounced around the inner solar system like a cosmic billiard ball, circling the sun almost four times.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: WSOCTV
Six years ago, Cristian Fernandez’s world changed when he was shot in the back outside a club on Albemarle Road. After months in the hospital, doctors told Fernandez he would be paralyzed from the chest down for the rest of his life, and he has spent most of the last six years on a bed in his family’s small living room in east Charlotte.
Because he came to the United States illegally as a child, his mother could not get the help he would need to pay the mounting medical bills, so in 2013 he applied for a special visa that would give him a start on legal residency and eventually U.S. citizenship.
It’s called a U-Visa, and the government hands out 10,000 of them a year to victims of certain — mostly violent — crimes and their family members. Fernandez and his mother received theirs in July and it immediately began opening doors.
Read more from this story HERE.
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Illegal Immigrant Drunk Driver Hits And Kills 3-Year-Old Waiting For Ice Cream (+video)
By Chuck Ross.
An illegal immigrant driving drunk and without a license crashed through a fence Sunday, hitting and killing a 3-year-old girl as she was waiting in line for ice cream in Porterville, California.
Adolf Balbuena, 18, mowed down the toddler, Angeles Moreno, as she and several others, including an 8-year-old boy, were waiting line at an ice cream truck.
After hitting Moreno, Balbuena backed up and drove away. He was arrested at his home around an hour later,the Fresno Bee reported.
Initial reports did not state Balbuena’s immigration status, but KMPH reported on Tuesday that he is an illegal immigrant from Mexico. Though the local district attorney is handling the case, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will ultimately decide whether he will be tried in the U.S. or deported back to Mexico, the TV station reported.
Both the Fresno Bee and KMPH noted this was the third hit-and-run to have occurred in the San Joaquin Valley in the past few months.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Mark Makela for The New York Times
The seminars offered police officers some useful tips on seizing property from suspected criminals. Don’t bother with jewelry (too hard to dispose of) and computers (“everybody’s got one already”), the experts counseled. Do go after flat screen TVs, cash and cars. Especially nice cars.
In one seminar, captured on video in September, Harry S. Connelly Jr., the city attorney of Las Cruces, N.M., called them “little goodies.” And then Mr. Connelly described how officers in his jurisdiction could not wait to seize one man’s “exotic vehicle” outside a local bar.
“A guy drives up in a 2008 Mercedes, brand new,” he explained. “Just so beautiful, I mean, the cops were undercover and they were just like ‘Ahhhh.’ And he gets out and he’s just reeking of alcohol. And it’s like, ‘Oh, my goodness, we can hardly wait.’ ”
Mr. Connelly was talking about a practice known as civil asset forfeiture, which allows the government, without ever securing a conviction or even filing a criminal charge, to seize property suspected of having ties to crime. The practice, expanded during the war on drugs in the 1980s, has become a staple of law enforcement agencies because it helps finance their work. It is difficult to tell how much has been seized by state and local law enforcement, but under a Justice Department program, the value of assets seized has ballooned to $4.3 billion in the 2012 fiscal year from $407 million in 2001. Much of that money is shared with local police forces.
The practice of civil forfeiture has come under fire in recent months, amid aspate of negative press reports and growing outrage among civil rights advocates, libertarians and members of Congress who have raised serious questions about the fairness of the practice, which critics say runs roughshod over due process rights. In one oft-cited case, a Philadelphia couple’s home was seized after their son made $40 worth of drug sales on the porch. Despite that opposition, many cities and states are moving to expand civil seizures of cars and other assets. The seminars, some of which were captured on video, raise a curtain on how law enforcement officials view the practice.
Read more from this story HERE.
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“IF IN DOUBT…TAKE IT!” Behind Closed Doors, Government Officials Make Shocking Comments About Civil Forfeiture
By Nick Sibilla.
Without even needing to charge someone with a crime, law enforcement can seize and keep cash, cars and even homes, by exercising civil forfeiture. Now the Institute for Justice has uncovered recordings of government officials from across the country making unsettling comments about this controversial power:
• One city attorney called his legal documents a “masterpiece of deception” and has won 96 percent of his forfeiture cases.
• An assistant district attorney takes property, even from owners who have been acquitted, because “people are not found innocent, they are found not guilty.”
• One government official doesn’t want to disclose information about civil forfeiture, because it might become a “bullet-point for people that are trying to fight the program.”
• A prosecutor teaches other attorneys how to take property from innocent people. He even offers this piece of advice, “IF IN DOUBT…TAKE IT!”
Read more from this story HERE.