U.S. Military Takes Over Hurricane Relief Delivery in Puerto Rico

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The Department of Defense took over the distribution of hurricane relief from government officials in Puerto Rico this weekend after local mayors failed to appropriately disperse the emergency items to the territory’s 78 municipalities, The Miami Herald reported Sunday.

According to The Herald, food, water, and medical supplies were previously delivered to 10 regional staging sites in Puerto Rico, but the mayors did not coordinate properly to distribute the large containers of relief at the staging sites.

Instead, 10 to 20 soldiers will be posted in every municipality with vehicles and logistical support, where they will deliver relief to every neighborhood.

“We need to push it directly to the barrio to ensure that everyone’s getting it,” Brig. Gen. Jose J. Reyes, assistant adjutant general of the Puerto Rico National Guard said. “They will have some vehicles. They will have radio communications as well as logistics support…. They are going to be living there. They are going to be operating 24/7.” (Read more from “U.S. Military Takes Over Hurricane Relief Delivery in Puerto Rico” HERE)

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California Hepatitis A Outbreak on Verge of Epidemic

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The California hepatitis A outbreak is on the verge of reaching statewide epidemic status, as cases have spread through homeless tent cities from San Diego north to Sacramento.

California health officials have reported that at least 569 people have been infected with the hepatitis A liver disease and 17 have died since a San Diego County outbreak was first identified in November. Cases have migrated north to homeless populations in Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, San Francisco and Sacramento over the last 11 months.

Although local and state authorities have tried to underplay the risks and severity of the outbreak, the most recent annual totals for cases of hepatitis A in the United States was 1,390 in 2015, according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC). California only reported 179 cases during the same year. (Read more from “California Hepatitis A Outbreak on Verge of Epidemic” HERE)

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Hair-Raising Questions About Vegas Mystery Killer

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Who was the woman in the crowd 45 minutes before the shooting, telling people they would die that night? She was led away, we were told. But by whom? To where? Who was she? . . .

How did Paddock get all that weaponry into his hotel room without arousing attention? How did housekeeping not notice what he had in the suite and raise questions? Did he refuse any housekeeping maintenance during his four-day stay in the suite, which was comped by the hotel because he was a high-roller gambler? Is that the reason no one asked any questions about him? . . .

His car at the hotel was found to have hundreds of rounds of ammunition and explosive material in it – but it wasn’t wired to detonate.

It was reported he had female companionship over those few days at the hotel. The latest is that police have identified the local prostitute he was with, but they have not released that information.

Paddock’s live-in girlfriend was first reported in Mexico, then in Tokyo, and then it was changed to be the Philippines, where she has relatives. It’s also reported that he wired $100,000 there, but we don’t know for certain who received it or its purpose. She has since returned to the U.S. and was questioned by the FBI, but few details have been released. (Read more from “Hair-Raising Questions About Vegas Mystery Killer” HERE)

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Harvey Weinstein Fired From His Own Company

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Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced cofounder and CEO of The Weinstein Company, has been fired effective immediately, his board of directors said on Sunday.

The statement said:

“In light of new information about misconduct by Harvey Weinstein that has emerged in the past few days, the directors of The Weinstein Company – Robert Weinstein, Lance Maerov, Richard Koenigsberg and Tarak Ben Ammar – have determined, and have informed Harvey Weinstein, that his employment with The Weinstein Company is terminated, effective immediately.”

The company has been under intense pressure since The New York Times broke an investigative story on Thursday detailing three decades of sexual misconduct, including propositioning actresses and harrassing female employees. More ugly stories continued to dribble out over the weekend, including a vulgar report by a news anchor that Weinstein masturbated in front of her and other stories of inappropriate propositions. (Read more from “Harvey Weinstein Fired From His Own Company” HERE)

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School Teaches Kids, Staff How to ‘Witness Whiteness’

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An expensive St. Louis kindergarten-through-grade 8 school is making sure its students are aware of race from the moment their enrolled until they time the graduate.

Thanks to the “Witnessing Whiteness” program, the $17,500 per year College School actually starts the racial consciousness in pre-kindergarten, with teachers pointing out to students, for example, how “few specific shades [of crayons], ranging from beige to brown” can be used as “the skin colors of figures in their drawings.”

According to The St. Louis American, the program is part of the “school’s approach to addressing race at every educational level.” For teachers and staff, they get to participate in discussions designed to get them to “rethink” how they view race. (Read more from “School Teaches Kids, Staff How to ‘Witness Whiteness'” HERE)

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Trump Says North Korea Diplomacy Has Failed, ‘Only One Thing Will Work’

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US President Donald Trump said Saturday that diplomatic efforts with North Korea have consistently failed, adding that “only one thing will work.”

Trump has engaged in an escalating war of words with North Korean strongman Kim Jong-Un, trading insults amid rising tensions between the two nuclear-armed rivals.

“Presidents and their administrations have been talking to North Korea for 25 years, agreements made and massive amounts of money paid,” Trump tweeted.

It “hasn’t worked, agreements violated before the ink was dry, makings fools of U.S. negotiators. Sorry, but only one thing will work!”

Trump returned to the theme when he appeared on former governor Mike Huckabee’s show on Trinity Broadcasting Network television on Saturday, blaming previous administrations for not having adequately addressed the issue before. (Read more from “Trump Says North Korea Diplomacy Has Failed, ‘Only One Thing Will Work'” HERE)

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Disgusting: Satanist Brings Abortion Case to Supreme Court

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A Missouri woman who is an adherent of the Satanic Temple won a victory in court last week in her quest to show that state abortion law violates her religious beliefs.

The Western District Court of Appeals ruled in her favor Tuesday, writing that her constitutional challenge — rare for its basis in religion — presented “a contested matter of right that involves fair doubt and reasonable room for disagreement.”

The woman, identified as Mary Doe in court documents, argued that her religion does not adhere to the idea that life begins at conception, and, because of that, the prerequisites for an abortion in Missouri are unconstitutionally violating her freedom of religion protected by the First Amendment. (Read more from “Disgusting: Satanist Brings Abortion Case to Supreme Court” HERE)

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Why Would Obama Allow His Daughter to Intern for a Sexual Predator? Michelle Praises Him as a ‘Wonderful Human Being’

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By Danielle Burgos. As news breaks on media mogul Harvey Weinsten’s alleged sexual harassment stretching back decades, it’s alarming to think how many women may have passed through the doors of what accusers claim was a toxic work environment. One young lady who just added The Weinstein Company to their resume? Malia Obama, Barack and Michelle’s eldest daughter. When Malia Obama worked for Harvey Weinstein, she was 18. To be clear, Obama is not one of the women accusing Weinstein of sexual harassment. A statement from Weinstein’s lawyer to The New York Times states, “He denies many of the accusations as patently false.” Weinstein also released a longer statement to the Times that said in part:

“I appreciate the way I’ve behaved with colleagues in the past has caused a lot of pain, and I sincerely apologize for it. Though I’m trying to do better, I know I have a long way to go.” . . .

EARLIER: Page Six first reported Malia Obama’s internship back on January 19, 2017 as unconfirmed rumor, but the very next day, The Hollywood Reporter officially confirmed Obama had secured an internship. This isn’t the first brush the Obamas have had with Weinstein. In 2011, Weinstein held a lavish, star-studded fundraiser for Obama’s 2012 presidential run at the exec’s Westport, CT mansion, and donated over $28,500 indirectly to Obama’s 2008 campaign through the DNC and their White House Victory Fund. According to Deadline: Hollywood, Weinstein praised Obama at the time, saying “You can make the case that he’s the Paul Newman of American presidents.” (Read more from “Why Would Obama Allow His Daughter to Intern for a Sexual Predator? Michelle Praises Him as a ‘Wonderful Human Being'” HERE)

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Michelle Obama Praised Harvey Weinstein as a ‘Wonderful Human Being’

By Fox News. Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein will reportedly be suspended from his film company pending an internal probe into multiple sexual harassment claims.

This comes after The New York Times reported Thursday that Weinstein has reached at least eight legal settlements with women over alleged harassment.

In the wake of these allegations, a video is making the rounds, showing former First Lady Michelle Obama praising Weinstein as a “wonderful human being” and a “good friend” at a student film symposium in 2013.

“I want to start by thanking Harvey Weinstein for organizing this amazing day,” Obama said at the Careers in Film Symposium at the White House. “This is possible because of Harvey. He is a wonderful human being, a good friend and just a powerhouse.”

“And the fact that he and his team took the time to make this happen for all of you should say something not about me or about this place, but about you,” she continued.

(Read more from “Michelle Obama Praised Harvey Weinstein as a ‘Wonderful Human Being'” HERE)

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Harvey Weinstein Paid off Sexual Harassment Accusers for Decades

By The New York Times. Two decades ago, the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein invited Ashley Judd to the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel for what the young actress expected to be a business breakfast meeting. Instead, he had her sent up to his room, where he appeared in a bathrobe and asked if he could give her a massage or she could watch him shower, she recalled in an interview . . .

In 2014, Mr. Weinstein invited Emily Nestor, who had worked just one day as a temporary employee, to the same hotel and made another offer: If she accepted his sexual advances, he would boost her career, according to accounts she provided to colleagues who sent them to Weinstein Company executives. The following year, once again at the Peninsula, a female assistant said Mr. Weinstein badgered her into giving him a massage while he was naked, leaving her “crying and very distraught,” wrote a colleague, Lauren O’Connor, in a searing memo asserting sexual harassment and other misconduct by their boss . . .

An investigation by The New York Times found previously undisclosed allegations against Mr. Weinstein stretching over nearly three decades, documented through interviews with current and former employees and film industry workers, as well as legal records, emails and internal documents from the businesses he has run, Miramax and the Weinstein Company.

During that time, after being confronted with allegations including sexual harassment and unwanted physical contact, Mr. Weinstein has reached at least eight settlements with women, according to two company officials speaking on the condition of anonymity. (Read more from “Harvey Weinstein Paid off Sexual Harassment Accusers for Decades” HERE)

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Tim Murphy: ‘Consistent’ Pro-Lifer

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For the last two days, I have seen a series of frantic headlines — wounded and outraged on one side, gleeful and taunting on the other — about Representative Tim Murphy, the pro-life Congressman who reportedly pressured his mistress to have an abortion.

The fact that this happened is no more a surprise to me than it is to the mocking pro-choice commenters like CNN writer Jill Filipovic, who opened her commentary by asking “When is abortion OK even for the most vociferous pro-lifer? When that person needs one, of course.”

I’ll get to Filipovic’s comment and why I agree with that one in a moment. The first and foremost question on my mind is, why does the pro-life movement seem to feel so betrayed?

I looked up Murphy’s pro-life voting record. Down the line, he’s voted for 20-week bans, defunding bills, born alive infant protection acts, and the like. Not once has he introduced or voted for anything that would prohibit the killing of children younger than 20 weeks.

So if his mistress was less than 20 weeks pregnant (as something like 98% of pregnant women who obtain abortions are), Murphy’s action was entirely consistent with his position as a pro-life politician.

Of course pro-lifers feel betrayed because they think a pro-life politician is someone who actually believes abortion is evil, and who votes for 20-week bans as a step toward 12-week bans, which will be a step toward life at conception acts. Why they still think this after 45 years is a mystery. But the sooner they discover that pro-life politicians are just that — politicians — the sooner they can begin to use their unified voice to demand something real and meaningful. Voting for “pro-life” bills is how a politician keeps his conservative voter base. Wearing the moniker “pro-life” is how our current president convinced half the country that he represented their values, when in fact he stands in direct opposition to the values of any consistently moral person (in fact, I would bet money that Donald Trump has paid for abortions himself, but if he hasn’t, he has openly supported and participated in all kinds of sins that lead to it and prop it up).

Which leads me to why Filipovic was correct ( or rather one or two of her comments were). In fact, she’s saying what many abolitionists have also said.

There has been a longstanding battle between pro-life apologists and abolitionists about whether to use words like “sin” in reference to abortion. The prevailing pro-life opinion is that the use of theological terms will work against “saving babies” and that it is far better to argue with humanists and atheists from their own worldview, using arguments like the S.L.E.D. test.

The problem is, it’s possible (and easy in some cases) to convince people from an intellectual standpoint that abortion is murder. But when those same people are in dire circumstances, or need to cover up affairs, or find themselves in the valley of decision, intellectual assent to an idea is not enough to restrain them. Intellectual assent does not change the heart.

That’s why abolitionists insist on saying that abortion is sin, and that the answer to sin is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Only the Gospel has the power to take a heart of stone and turn it to a heart of flesh. Only the Gospel can make the murder of a child (and all the wickedness that leads up to it) unthinkable.

A pro-life politician can be consistently pro-life by voting for 20-week bans and killing his own children before they reach 20 weeks. In fact, that’s what we should expect in today’s culture. But a man whose mind has been renewed, who has been washed clean by the blood of Christ, who no longer lives for his own desires but for the good of others, who loves God and all those created in His image… that man should neither vote for a 20-week ban NOR would he kill his own children to cover up an affair. (For more from the author of “Tim Murphy: ‘Consistent’ Pro-Lifer” please click HERE)

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U.S. State Can Now Jail People for Misusing Gender Pronouns

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California can now start jailing people that refuse to use the preferred gender pronouns of nursing home residents after Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill Thursday.

The law’s effect is limited to nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, but mandates that those who “willfully and repeatedly” refuse “to use a transgender resident’s preferred name or pronouns” can be slapped with a $1,000 fine and up to one year in prison, according to the California Heath and Safety code.

Known as the “LGBT Senior Bill Of Rights,” the legislation also requires nursing homes and care facilities to allow residents to use the bathroom of their choice, regardless of biological sex. The bill’s author, state Sen. Scott Weiner, argues that religious views don’t hold weight in public areas.

“Everyone is entitled to their religious view,” Wiener said. “But when you enter the public space, when you are running an institution, you are in a workplace, you are in a civil setting, and you have to follow the law.” (Read more from “U.S. State Can Now Jail People for Misusing Gender Pronouns” HERE)

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