Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida — a former GOP presidential candidate and rival of Donald Trump — has confirmed he will be attending the Republican National Convention and said he will even speak on Trump’s behalf if asked to do so.
In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Rubio said, “I want to be helpful. I don’t want to be harmful, because I don’t want Hillary Clinton to be president.” The Republican National Convention will be held in Cleveland in July.
Pointing out the fact that his policy ideas and Trump’s differ, Rubio added, “That said … I don’t want Hillary Clinton to be president. If there’s something I can do to help that from happening, and it’s helpful to the cause, I’d most certainly be honored to be considered for that.”
This is in direct contrast to a tweet from earlier this year in which Rubio, using the hashtag #NeverTrump, indicated he was joining with other Republicans who would not vote for Trump regardless of the circumstances.
Rubio also told Tapper that he would release his 167 delegates.
When asked if he would be interested in becoming Trump’s running mate, Rubio said he “wouldn’t be the right choice for Trump,” adding, “He won the nomination and he deserves to have a running mate that more fully embraces some of the things he stands for.”
Admitting to still having political aspirations, Rubio said it was a “safe assumption” that he would again run for political office, saying, “I can tell you I enjoy public service. If there’s an opportunity to serve again in a way that I feel passionate about, I’ll most certainly think I would explore it.” (For more from the author of “Rubio Makes Surprise Announcement About Republican Convention, Trump” please click HERE)
On Wednesday night, 43 Republican members of Congress joined the Democrats to vote for President Barack Obama’s transgender agenda.
Whereas last week Congress voted to reject this proposal—known as the Maloney amendment—last night they voted to ratify Obama’s 2014 executive order barring federal contractors from what it describes as “discrimination” on the basis of “sexual orientation and gender identity” in their private employment policies.
And, of course, “discrimination” on the basis of “gender identity” can be something as simple as having a bathroom policy based on biological sex, not gender identity, as we learned last week from Obama’s transgender directives. And “discrimination” on the basis of “sexual orientation” can be something as reasonable as an adoption agency preferring married moms and dads for orphans, than other arrangements.
Indeed, in the past few weeks we’ve seen additional examples of what counts as “discrimination” on the basis of “gender identity.”
The New York City Commission on Human Rights issued official legal guidance saying employers can be fined up to $250,000 for not addressing employees by the pronoun of their choice—including pronouns such as “ze” and “hir.” As UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh explains, this would require “employers and businesses to prevent [the use of “wrong” pronouns] by co-workers and patrons and not just by themselves or their own employees.”
A public school district in Oregon paid a teacher $60,000 because colleagues declined to use the pronoun “they” to describe the teacher. The teacher, Leo Soell, does “not identify as male or female but rather transmasculine and genderqueer, or androgynous.” As Volokh explains: “Soell wants people to call Soell ‘they,’ and submitted a complaint to the school district objecting (in part) that other schoolteachers engaged in ‘harassment’ by, among other things, ‘refusing to call me by my correct name and gender to me or among themselves’ (emphasis added).”
The 4th Circuit Court has said a Virginia school district must allow bathroom access based on “gender identity” not biology. The school district created a policy that says bathroom and locker room access is primarily based on biology, while also creating accommodations for transgender students: only biological girls can use the girls’ room, only biological boys can use the boys’ room, and any student can use one of the three single-occupancy bathrooms, which the school created specifically to accommodate transgender students. But the court said this commonsense policy was itself “discrimination” on the basis of “gender identity.”
Congress should not be ratifying Obama’s radical transgender agenda and imposing these outcomes on private employers just because they contract with the government.
All Americans should be free to contract with the government without penalty because of their reasonable beliefs about contentious issues. The federal government should not use government contracting to reshape civil society about controversial issues that have nothing to do with the federal contract at stake.
Obama’s executive order and the Maloney amendment treat conscientious judgments about behavior as if they were invidious acts of discrimination akin to racism or sexism.
But sexual orientation and gender identity are not like race. Indeed, sexual orientation and gender identity are unclear, ambiguous terms. They can refer to voluntary behaviors as well as thoughts and inclinations, and it is reasonable for employers to make distinctions based on actions.
By contrast, “race” and “sex” clearly refer to traits, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, these traits (unlike voluntary behaviors) do not affect fitness for any job.
Congress tried to minimize the damage of the Maloney amendment with two provisions last night. One provision, introduced by Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., amended the Maloney amendment to say that it couldn’t violate the U.S. Constitution. Another provision, the Byrne Amendment, attempted to attach existing religious liberty protections to the bill. Neither adequately protects against the damage of Maloney.
Liberal activist judges will do all they can to ensure that sexual orientation and gender identity policies will trump religious liberty protections.
This is why Congress should not be elevating sexual orientation and gender identity as a protected class garnering special legal privileges.
Here is a list of the 43 Republicans who voted for the amendment:
Justin Amash, Mich.
Susan Brooks, Ind.
Mike Coffman, Colo.
Ryan Costello, Pa.
Carlos Curbelo, Fla.
Rodney Davis, Ill.
Jeff Denham, Calif.
Charlie Dent, Pa.
Mario Diaz-Balart, Fla.
Bob Dold, Ill.
Daniel Donovan, N.Y.
Tom Emmer, Minn.
Michael Fitzpatrick, Pa.
Rodney Frelinghuysen, N.J.
Chris Gibson, N.Y.
Joe Heck, Nev.
Will Hurd, Texas
Darrell Issa, Calif.
David Jolly, Fla.
John Katko, N.Y.
Adam Kinzinger, Ill.
Leonard Lance, N.J.
Frank LoBiondo, N.J.
Tom MacArthur, N.J.
Martha McSally, Ariz.
Pat Meehan, Pa.
Luke Messer, Ind.
Erik Paulsen, Minn.
Bruce Poliquin, Maine
Tom Reed, N.Y.
David Reichert, Wash.
Jim Renacci, Ohio
Tom Rooney, Fla.
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Fla.
John Shimkus, Ill.
Elise Stefanik, N.Y.
Fred Upton, Mich.
David Valadao, Calif.
Greg Walden, Ore.
Mimi Walters, Calif.
David Young, Iowa
Todd Young, Ind.
Lee Zeldin, N.Y.
(For more from the author of “43 Republicans Join Democrats to Support Obama’s Transgender Agenda” please click HERE)
150 years ago, Mark Twain visited Muslim-occupied Israel and wrote of “unpeopled deserts” and “mounds of barrenness”, of “forlorn” and “untenanted” cities.
Palestine is “desolate”, he concluded. “One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings.” The same is true of the Palestinian Museum which opened with much fanfare and one slight problem. While admission is free, there’s nothing inside for any of the visitors to see except the bare walls.
The Palestinian Museum had been in the works since 1998, but has no exhibits. The museum cost $24 million. All it has to show for it are a few low sloping sandy buildings indistinguishable from the dirt and a “garden” of scraggly bushes and shrubs. The Palestinian Museum is open, but there’s nothing inside.
It’s hard to think of a better metaphor for Palestine than a bunch of empty buildings designed by Irish and Chinese architects whose non-existent exhibits were the brainchild of its former Armenian-American director. It’s as Palestinian as bagels and cream cheese. Or skiing, hot cocoa and fjords.
Over the Palestinian Museum flies the proud flag of Palestine, which was originally the flag of the Iraqi-Jordanian Federation before the PLO “borrowed” it, and visitors might be greeted by the Palestinian anthem composed by Greek Communist Mikis Theodorakis. If it sounds anything like the soundtrack from Zorba the Greek, that’s because they both share the same composer.
All of Palestine is so authentically Palestinian that it might as well be made in China. At least that’s where the stained Keffiyahs worn by the stone throwers hurling rocks at passing Jewish families while posing heroically for Norwegian, Canadian and Chilean photojournalists are made.
Palestine is an empty building with nothing in it. It’s a political Potemkin village. There’s a flag, an anthem, a museum and all the trappings of a country. But if you look closer, there’s nothing inside.
The Palestinian Museum’s chairman, Omar al-Qattan, who was born in Beirut and lives in the UK, said that the “Palestinians” needed positive energy so badly that opening an empty museum made sense.
Just think how much positive energy can come from realizing that you have no culture, heritage or history to put in your museum. But actually the Palestinian Museum had to open in time for the Nakba. The Nakba is the annual commemoration of the failed invasion of Israel by foreign Muslim armies. The invasion by Egyptian, Iraqi, Syrian and Jordanian forces began on May 15. Egypt’s General Muhammad Haidar declared that the invading Muslim forces would be occupying Tel Aviv in two weeks.
Egyptian forces hit the village of Kfar Darom which had a few hundred residents and a few dozen militia members. They hit it with tanks, armored vehicles, infantry battalions, artillery and bombers. The invading colonial Muslim forces lost two soldiers for every single Jewish militia defender. Instead of taking Tel Aviv in two weeks, they were stuck laying siege to a tiny village for two months. That’s the Nakba. And you can see why the Muslim settlers in Israel have an annual day of mourning over the miserable defeat of their invading armies at the hands of the indigenous Jewish population.
Like its museum, all of Palestine is one long endless fraud. The opening of the Palestinian Museum will be attended by President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. Abbas was elected to a four-year term in 2005. It’s been a while since his term expired. The Palestinian Authority is just the PLO in drag. It claims authority over some territories that it doesn’t administer and has no control over.
But the empty Palestinian Museum isn’t about to let setbacks like a complete lack of things to put inside its bare walls get it down. Instead it’s doing what the PLO has always done in troubled times.
It’s invading Beirut.
Even though the Palestinian Museum has nothing to display, it’s opening a satellite museum in Beirut. If this “Palestinian” invasion goes anything like the last one, the satellite Palestinian Museum will be murdering Christians inside of a week. Beyond Beirut, the Palestinian Museum plans satellite museums in San Diego, London, Dubai and Gaza. In the Islamic fashion, the lack of an inner soul is compensated for with external expansionism.
Meanwhile the empty Palestinian Museum had found a prestigious new director, Mahmoud Hawari, a scholar whom it described as “the lead curator at the British Museum”. Hawari though isn’t a curator of anything. He’s a visiting academic. The foundation behind the Palestinian Museum blamed its new director for misleading them with a bad curriculum vitae. But it has yet to change its website. But Palestine has always been based on lies. Why should the Palestinian Museum break that tradition?
Hawari will have to decide what, if anything, to put in the Palestinian Museum. The chairman however thinks that it should celebrate Islamic terrorism and discuss who was living in Israel first. These two topics are the beginning and end of any Palestinian identity. And both of them involve hating Jews.
Eliminate Jews, as the Muslim and non-Muslim champions of the Palestinian hoax have attempted to do, and there is no Palestine left. Palestine is a parasitic political entity that derives its wealth, its water and its electricity from Israel. It also gets its history, its culture and its entire reason for existing from Israel.
The Muslim settlers claim that King David was a Muslim, that Jesus was a Palestinian and that the Star of David, which long predated Islam, is an Islamic symbol. The only Palestinian culture is appropriation.
Palestine can no more exist without Israel than a Plasmodium malariae or an HIV virus can exist outside a warm body. Despite all the whining about an independent state, the only purpose for a Palestinian state that the PLO, Hamas or anyone else has been able to conceive of is attacking Israel.
Palestinian identity has no meaning or context without hating Jews.
The Palestinian Museum is as empty as the souls of a populace that has wholly given itself over to a cult of death. Nothing can be put in there except hatred of Jews.
The echoing emptiness of the Palestinian Museum has been blamed, with utter predictability, on the Jews. The Palestinian Museum had not wanted to taint its walls with the works of the filthy Jews. And so its overseers had to import from outside Israel since the only thing “Palestine” manufactures is death.
The Jews had made it difficult to bring in authentically Palestinian, German lighting fixtures and Australian fire exit signs. But when the lighting fixtures and fire exit signs were finally put up, there was still nothing to put in the museum. And that too was the fault of the Jews.
Omar Al Qattan complains that Israel makes it difficult to import exhibition objects. But you would think that a museum a few miles outside the capital of the Palestinian Authority could find something “Palestinian” to exhibit in what it claims is its historic land. And yet the bare walls testify that it couldn’t.
There is no Palestinian culture. There is no Palestinian history. Instead there’s an empty museum built by an Irish architecture firm. Even the “Palestinian” garden is the work of a Jordanian landscaper.
Palestine is a Potemkin village. It has plenty of Muslim settlers squatting on the sites of historical Jewish towns and villages, but it is as desolate as it was when Mark Twain visited it. Its culture is an empty building. There are plenty of bodies, but there is no soul. Palestine has no past and no future. (For more from the author of “The “Palestine” Hoax” please click HERE)
When I log into Facebook, I see the faces of children who have lost parents in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Three of these Gold Star children are Kristie, Evelyn and Alia Robertson. Their father, U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Forrest Robertson, was killed in Afghanistan on Nov. 3, 2013.
“Some days are just hard on them,” Sgt. 1st Class Robertson’s wife, Marcie, recently posted on Facebook. “I don’t think I will ever know how to respond when one of them starts venting and ends in tears saying … ‘and I don’t have a dad.’ It shatters my heart every single time.”
Forrest and Marcie’s daughters, who are 16, 13 and 8, respectively, have already been through more than most of us can imagine. They are part of a new generation of American children shouldering the cruelest burdens of our country’s post-9/11 conflicts.
When I think of the Robertsons, who have suffered enormously, it is impossible to utter an unfortunate phrase that somehow seeped into our national consciousness: “Happy Memorial Day.” As this courageous family’s struggle demonstrates, Memorial Day is not “happy.” It is a time to honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in service to our nation.
“It’s pretty hard to believe it’s been three years since I last saw him,” Marcie wrote in February while sharing one of her husband’s last Facebook messages. “I’m not sure it will ever feel real.”
As Marcie told me in the months following Forrest’s passing, the 35-year-old soldier, who was on his fifth deployment, was only a few weeks from coming home to Kansas.
“I couldn’t speak,” Marcie said at the time about receiving the devastating news of her husband’s death in Afghanistan. “I couldn’t form words.”
Three U.S. service members have died so far this year in the country where Forrest was killed, and as the May 3 death of U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer (SEAL) Charles Keating IV reminds us, our troops still face grave danger in Iraq, too. Memorial Day was created during the Civil War to salute departed warriors like them.
As we are taught by an inspiring war widow who is raising three kids, however, Monday doesn’t have to be filled with sadness and tears. Last year, family and friends joined Marcie and her daughters to honor Forrest with a Memorial Day barbeque.
“Thank you is becoming completely inadequate to describe how much I appreciate all that has been done for us,” Marcie wrote. “It is so comforting to know we have so many people in so many places willing to do so much for us.
“People tell me all the time ‘I can’t imagine. I don’t know how you do it,’” she continued. “It is because of all the love and support shown to us (sometimes by complete strangers) that we are still standing.”
Marcie’s poignant words show us that a community’s support can help a Gold Star family persevere. So on Monday, instead of walking around saying “Happy Memorial Day,” what if we all joined together in praying for the Robertsons and thousands of brave families like them?
“The storm that was sent to break you is going to be the storm that God uses to make you,” Marcie, whose strength defines the resilience of our nation’s Gold Star community, recently shared.
When the Robertsons visit Forrest’s place of rest, they see an American flag and a quote from Thomas Payne on the fallen soldier’s majestic headstone.
“I prefer peace but if trouble must come, let it come in my time so my children can live in peace,” the quote reads.
Kristie, Evelyn and Alia Robertson are growing up in a country that their father gave all to defend. They are worthy of his ultimate sacrifice. How we mark Memorial Day – and how we choose to honor the fallen – will help determine whether we are worthy, too. (For more from the author of “Instead of ‘Happy Memorial Day,’ Let’s Say a Prayer” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/flags-292774_960_720.jpg716960Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-27 22:35:112016-05-28 03:11:13Instead of ‘Happy Memorial Day,’ Let’s Say a Prayer
Is there an increasing hostility to Christian values and religious freedoms in our country today? Here are seven representative examples, all from the last few weeks. Judge for yourself.
1. The NCAA announced that it will not hold any men’s and women’s Final Four basketball events in a city that “discriminates” against anyone based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
In its official statement, the NCAA declared, “The board’s decision follows the recent actions of legislatures in several states, which have passed laws allowing residents to refuse to provide services to some people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. While proponents of the laws focus on how they protect religious beliefs, critics have voiced concerns that they create an environment of sanctioned discrimination.”
Not only, then, has the NCAA grossly mischaracterized these recent laws, but it is now guilty of discriminating against biblically based beliefs and declaring that no Final Four game will be held in any city that does not allow men to use women’s bathrooms or that protects a Christian photographer from being forced to shoot a same-sex “wedding.”
2. The Colorado Supreme Court has chosen not to hear the case of Christian baker Jack Phillips who was previously ordered by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission “to create cakes for same-sex celebrations, re-educate his staff, and file quarterly ‘compliance’ reports for two years.”
According to Jeremy Tedesco, Senior Counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, “We asked the Colorado Supreme Court to take this case to ensure that government understands that its duty is to protect the people’s freedom to follow their beliefs personally and professionally, not force them to violate those beliefs as the price of earning a living. Jack, who has happily served people of all backgrounds for years, simply exercised the long-cherished American freedom to decline to use his artistic talents to promote a message and event with which he disagrees, and that freedom shouldn’t be placed in jeopardy for anyone.”
The Court declined to hear the case, meaning that the state’s Civil Rights Commission not only has the power to require a bakery to make same-sex “wedding” cakes but also to require that baker to “reeducate” his staff and file regular reports proving that he is baking those cakes.
Chairman Mao would be proud of state-mandated “reeducation” like this.
3. Dr. Eric Walsh, the highly qualified, newly hired District Health Director with the Georgia Department of Public Health was fired because of the content of his sermons as a Seventh Day Adventist.
As expressed by Jeremy Dys, an attorney with First Liberty, which has taken on Walsh’s case, “No one in this country should be fired from their job for something that was said in a church or from a pulpit during a sermon.” And as noted by attorney David French, “Working for former president Bush and President Obama to combat AIDS, serving as a board member of the Latino Health Collaborative, and starting California’s first city-run dental clinic for low-income families dealing with HIV/AIDS wasn’t sufficient to overcome the horror at Walsh’s Christian views.”
How dare he preach what the Bible says and try to serve his country at the same time.
4. Several senators have introduced a bill that would deem “all efforts to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity an ‘unfair or deceptive act or practice’ under the Federal Trade Commission Act.”
That’s right. It would be illegal — a form of “medical malpractice” — to counsel someone struggling with same-sex attraction or gender identify confusion, but it would be perfectly legal to encourage someone to embrace those attractions or act on that confusion.
Already in 2009, conservative journalist Matthew Cullinan Hoffman wryly observed:
A man goes to a psychologist with a problem. “Doctor,” he says, “I’m suffering terribly. I feel like a woman trapped inside the body of a man. I want to become a woman.”
The psychologist responds: “No problem. We can discuss this idea for a couple of years, and if you’re still sure you want to be a woman, we can have a surgeon remove your penis, give you hormones for breast enlargement and make other changes to your body. Problem solved.”
Gratified, the first patient leaves, followed by a second. “Doctor,” he says, “I feel terrible. I’m a man but I feel attracted to other men. I want to change my sexual preference. I want to become heterosexual.”
The psychologist responds: “Oh no, absolutely not! That would be unethical. Sexual orientation is an immutable characteristic!”
Family therapist Adam Jessel offered a similar observation: “In today’s climate, if Bill tells me that he is attracted to his neighbor Fred’s young child and he wants to reduce these attractions, I, as a therapist, can try to help him. If Bill has an unwanted attraction to Fred’s wife, this too is something I am permitted to help him with. But if Bill has an unwanted attraction to Fred himself, then it’s regarded as unethical for me to help.”
If this new bill becomes law, it would not only be considered unethical to help Bill deal with his same-sex attractions, it would be illegal.
It would also be illegal to help a person get to the root of his or her gender confusion, but it would be perfectly legal for a counselor to recommend hormone blockers for a 10-year-old to stop the onset of puberty and then to prepare that child for sex-change surgery as soon as they were old enough.
Here are a few more examples, in shorter form, all from recent weeks.
5. The NBA announced that it will not hold next year’s All-Star game in Charlotte, North Carolina unless the state changes HB2, the Bathroom Privacy Act.
So, unless North Carolina agrees to let grown men use women’s locker rooms and changing facilities, and unless it removes protections for religious liberties, it will be punished.
6. The Department of Education has decided, “Religious schools that receive federal money yet obtain federal exemptions to [allegedly!] discriminate against LGBT students and employees will have their waivers posted online for public view.”
This means that any Christian institution receiving federal money and at the same time holding to biblical morality and sexuality could suffer adverse consequences.
“Led by Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the lawmakers said in December, ‘We are concerned these waivers allow for discrimination under the guise of religious freedom.’”
Oh, those terrible religious freedoms!
7. As reported on Breitbart News, “A federal court sided with a transgender student who insisted that the Obama administration’s reading of federal Title IX rules would allow her to choose her own bathroom at her Virginia high school.”
According to the exultant Virginia ACLU, “With this decision, we hope that schools and legislators will finally get the message that excluding transgender kids from the restrooms is unlawful sex discrimination.”
In other words, no matter of what kind of hardship or inconvenience this puts on the rest of the students, and without any type of scientific proof that a child is actually “transgender,” the perceived needs of the one or two struggling children will be imposed on the other 1,000, and the Obama administration will come after your school if you fail to comply.
What’s scary is that I could have listed quite a few more examples, all from the month of April.
Believers in America, if somehow you are still sleeping, it is high time you woke up. (For more from the author of “7 Sure Signs America Has Declared War on Our Faith” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/cross-671379_960_720-1.jpg720960Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-27 22:33:442016-05-29 01:12:417 Sure Signs America Has Declared War on Our Faith
After finally clinching the GOP presidential nomination, Donald Trump is getting more spiritual. That is, according to Ben Carson, a top surrogate and possible vice presidential pick for the businessman’s campaign.
“I know that he has prayed — I have eyewitness,” Carson said in a Facebook Live interview with The Hill Friday.
But when Carson, who is deeply Christian, was asked if he had ever personally witnessed Trump in prayer, he admitted he had only heard that Trump has started to pray more often.
“I have not seen him [pray], but I have eyewitnesses who have,” he said. “And I think he’s starting to move more in that direction. I think that’s a good thing.”
Carson said Trump is moving to a place in which he believes in a “greater power.” The retired neurosurgeon also said he told Trump last week that he believes “God is using him.” (Read more from “Carson Says Trump Is Becoming More Spiritual” HERE)
Russia conducted a successful flight test of a developmental anti-satellite missile on Wednesday that is capable of destroying satellites in orbit, American defense officials said.
The Nudol direct ascent anti-satellite missile was launched from the Plesetsk test launch facility, located 500 miles north of Moscow, said officials familiar with the situation.
The missile was monitored by U.S. intelligence satellites and the test appeared to be successful.
The launch marks another major milestone for Moscow’s efforts to develop weapons capable of destroying U.S. navigation, communications, and intelligence satellites, a key strategic advantage.
No additional details were available, and it could not be learned if the Nudol missile was fired against a satellite or was test launched in a suborbital trajectory without hitting a target. (Read more from “Russia Flight Tests Anti-Satellite Missile” HERE)
Senator Ted Cruz (A, 97%) may have suspended his presidential campaign, but he is keeping his promise to continue to fight for conservative principles, vowing to challenge Donald Trump on the abortion plank of the Republican Platform.
During an interview on the “Today” Show on NBC in late April, Trump said he would change the Republican Party platform on abortion, adding exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother to the party’s pro-life position.
Cruz, speaking to Oklahoma radio host Pat Campbell, pledged to use his delegates to the Republican National Convention to fight that change.
“You have my word. One of the reasons that we are continuing to work to elect conservatives to be delegates, even though Donald has the delegates to get the nomination, we intend to do everything we can to fight for conservative principles to prevent Washington forces from watering down the platform,”
Cruz continued:
“The platform is a manifestation of what we believe as a party, and I think it is important that it continue to reflect conservative values, free-market values, constitutional liberties, Judeo-Christian principles, the values that built this country, and that is exactly what I intend to fight for.”
In his speech announcing an end to his presidential campaign, Senator Cruz made a promise:
“I am not suspending our fight to defend the constitution, to defend the Judeo-Christian values that built America. Our movement will continue and I give you my word that I will continue this fight with all of my strength and all of my ability.”
His vow to fight to keep the Republican Party platform unequivocally pro-life shows that Cruz intends to keep that promise. (For more from the author of “Ted Cruz Vows to Fight Trump on Abortion” please click HERE)
Donald Trump has reached the number of delegates needed to clinch the GOP presidential nomination, securing his status as the presumptive Republican nominee and avoiding a contested convention, according to a delegate count released Thursday by the Associated Press.
The AP reports that Trump was has reached 1,238 delegates, put over the 1,237 needed to win the nomination by a small number of the party’s unbound delegates who said they would support him at the convention. Trump will most likely add more delegates to his total before the convention in Cleveland, giving him a comfortable victory.
Trump’s achievement marks the completion of a primary campaign that has upended the political landscape and defied multiple predictions of failure from political commentators. It now sets the stage for a bitter fall campaign against likely Democratic rival Hillary Clinton . . .
Trump, a political neophyte who for years delivered caustic commentary on the state of the nation from the sidelines but had never run for office, fought off 16 other Republican contenders in an often ugly primary race.
Many on the right have been slow to warm to Trump, wary of his conservative bona fides and concerned about his crass personality. A so-called “Never Trump” movement, featuring high-profile conservatives, has frequently considered running a third-party candidate, but such efforts have so far not produced a candidate. (Read more from “Trump Reaches Delegate Number to Clinch GOP Nomination” HERE)
The chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee defended his inquiry to Facebook over accusations of anti-conservative bias, telling The Daily Signal he simply wants to make sure consumers aren’t being misled by the social media giant.
“We’re not interested in regulating any media platform out there. All we want to do is ensure that consumers know with clarity what it is, what [Facebook’s] policy is, and what the information is that they’re getting and how that’s put together,” Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., told The Daily Signal’s Editor-in-Chief Rob Bluey during a Facebook Live discussion in Thune’s Capitol Hill office on Thursday.
On May 9, Gizmodo reported that a former Facebook contractor observed instances when conservative news stories were suppressed from Facebook’s Trending Topics section, while other stories were injected even though they were not actually trending.
The allegations “were pretty difficult to overlook,” said Thune, who also serves as chairman of the Republican Conference Committee, the Senate GOP’s third-ranking leader.
“The allegations that were made suggest that [Facebook] actually had curators who were suppressing conservative content and infusing liberal content,” Thune said. “We’re just trying to get to the bottom of it.”
Thune sent a letter to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on May 10, asking questions related to the allegations made by Gizmodo and for Facebook “to provide some clarity for what their policy actually is,” Thune said.
“All we were interested in really was ensuring that how they describe what they do in terms of putting together the Trending Topics actually match the reality. And that the consumers weren’t being misled,” Thune said.
“They have a lot of users out there, over 160 million in the United States. If they’re representing themselves as a neutral platform that simply aggregates these stories and posts them based on a computer algorithm, that’s number of clicks, that’s one thing.”
What steps is Facebook taking to investigate claims of politically motivated manipulation of news stories in the Trending Topics section? If such claims are substantiated, what steps will Facebook take to hold the responsible individuals accountable?
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s office “slammed” Thune and his Republican Senate colleagues’ inquiry to Facebook, Politico reported.
Facebook responded to Thune on Monday, saying the company had “initiated an investigation into the policies and practices around Trending Topics to determine if anyone working on the product acted in ways that are inconsistent with our policies and mission.”
Thune says he felt Facebook took the response seriously.
In a letter responding to Thune, Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch wrote:
Our investigation has revealed no evidence of systematic political bias in the selection or prominence of stories included in the Trending Topics feature. Our data analysis indicated that conservative and liberal topics are approved as trending topics at virtually identical rates.
Facebook “went on to suggest that they’re going to make some changes in their policy. I thought it was a good outcome,” Thune said. “It was an issue that needed to be raised.”
Conservative leaders were invited to a meeting with Zuckerberg last week to discuss the situation. The Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint and Bluey were among those in attendance.
Thune says “by and large” Facebook has “been very beneficial for its users.” “The platform creates a very unique way in which people can connect and communicate and get information,” Thune said. (For more from the author of “Why This Senator Is Asking Facebook Tough Questions” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Botón_Me_gusta.svg-1.png17132000Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-27 01:05:292016-05-27 01:05:29Why This Senator Is Asking Facebook Tough Questions
