Planned Parenthood is praising Democrats in Congress after the spending bill released early Wednesday morning spared the organization from cuts.
As expected, the spending bill does not defund Planned Parenthood, a clear deal-breaker for Democrats, but the absence of spending cuts is still noteworthy given the intensity of the push to defund the group earlier this year.
Planned Parenthood Vice President Dana Singiser praised congressional Democrats on Wednesday for “holding the line against these harmful policy riders and cuts to key women’s health programs.”
“Extreme members of Congress spent an entire year targeting access to reproductive health care at every opportunity — even threatening to shut down the government,” she added. “Today’s budget bill maintains access to critical preventive health services and lacks these harmful attacks on women’s health care — at home and abroad.”
After pushing for complete defunding of Planned Parenthood ahead of the Oct. 1 funding deadline, the conservative House Freedom Caucus scaled back its demands to a call for compromise language that would give states the ability to choose to defund the group. (Read more from “Planned Parenthood Unscathed in Spending Bill” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00kathleenhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngkathleen2015-12-16 21:41:392016-04-11 10:55:00Planned Parenthood Unscathed in Spending Bill
In advance of the release of Congress’ year-end spending package, the office of Sen. Jeff Sessions is highlighting some terrorists who were recently granted access to the U.S. through the nation’s immigration system.
In an email to reporters Tuesday, a Sessions aide listed more than 30 examples of immigrants admitted to the U.S. who were recently implicated in terrorist activities.
Sessions, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, and other conservative lawmakers have warned against passing a spending bill that does not place limitations on admissions — in particular refugee admission — to the U.S.
“Congress must cancel the President’s blank refugee check and put Congress back in charge of the program. We cannot allow the President to unilaterally decide how many refugees he wishes to admit, nor continue to force taxpayers to pick up the tab for the tens of billions of unpaid-for welfare and entitlement costs,” Sessions and Sen. Richard Shelby, the chairman of the Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations subcommittee, said in a joint statement last week.
The pair added that passing the spending deal without limiting language “would put the U.S. on a path to approve admission for hundreds of thousands of migrants from a broad range of countries with jihadists movements over the next 12 months, on top of all the other autopilot annual immigration – absent language to reduce the numbers.” (Read more from “More than 30 Immigrants Admitted to the U.S. Have Been Recently Implicated in Terrorism” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-12-16 21:39:182016-04-11 10:55:00More than 30 Immigrants Admitted to the U.S. Have Been Recently Implicated in Terrorism
A judge declared a mistrial Wednesday in the case of Baltimore Police Officer William G. Porter after jurors said they had failed to reach an agreement on any of the charges against him in the death of Freddie Gray.
The decision, which came a day after jurors told Baltimore Circuit Judge Barry Williams they were deadlocked, frustrated activists who had watched the first trial in Gray’s death closely. Outside the downtown courtroom, city officials and community leaders pleaded for calm, and authorities reported two arrests, but no violence or serious disruptions.
Porter, 26, the first of six police officers to be tried in Gray’s death, remains charged with involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and misconduct in office. Gray, 25, died in April after suffering a severe spinal cord injury in the back of a police van.
Jurors deliberated for three days before Williams declared the mistrial. The decision now throws the other trials into flux.
Prosecutors chose to try Porter first, planning to use him as a witness at the trial of Officer Caesar Goodson. Goodson, who is charged with second-degree murder, was slated for trial in the first week of January. (Read more from “Mistrial Declared in Trial of Officer William Porter in Death of Freddie Gray” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-12-16 21:36:582016-04-11 10:55:00Mistrial Declared in Trial of Officer William Porter in Death of Freddie Gray
More students in the 12th grade said they smoked pot every day, compared to those who smoke daily cigarettes, finds a new federal report. It’s the first time since the survey began in 1975 that daily marijuana use surpassed cigarettes.
The “Monitoring the Future” survey released on Wednesday shows that 6% of 12th graders used marijuana every day—about the same rate as last year—while 5.5% of seniors reported smoking cigarettes daily. (That’s a drop from 2014, when 6.7% of high school seniors smoked cigarettes every day.)
Their perceptions of pot also changed; fewer students think it’s dangerous. Almost 32% of seniors said they thought regular marijuana use could be harmful, compared to 36% who felt that way last year. “The sense that marijuana has medicinal purposes and that doctors are prescribing it creates a sense that this drug cannot be so harmful,” says Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health (the group that funded the research).
Volkow says she is surprised that marijuana rates didn’t rise from 2014, after the past year’s attitude and policy changes surrounding the legalization of marijuana. “All of those factors have led many to predict that there would be an increase in the pattern of use of marijuana among teenagers, and we are not seeing it,” she says. Still, it was one of the only substances in the report that did not decline in usage. (Read more from “High School Seniors Now Prefer Marijuana to Cigarettes” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-12-16 21:36:332016-04-11 10:55:00High School Seniors Now Prefer Marijuana to Cigarettes
By Ian Hanchett. Republican presidential candidates Texas Senator Sen. Ted Cruz and Kentucky Senator Sen. Rand Paul sparred with fellow candidate Florida Senator Sen. Marco Rubio on the NSA and immigration during CNN’s prime GOP presidential debate.
Cruz said that the USA Freedom Act, “ended the federal government’s bulk collection of phone medadata of millions of law-abiding citizens. But number two, and the second half of it that is critical, it strengthened the tools of national security and law enforcement to go after terrorists. It gave us greater tools, and we are seeing those tools work right now in San Bernardino. And in particular, what it did, is the prior program only covered a relatively narrow slice of phone calls. When you had a terrorist, you could only search a relatively narrow slice of numbers, primarily landlines. The USA Freedom Act expands that, so now we have cell phones, now we have Internet phones, now we have the phones that terrorists are likely to use, and the focus of law enforcement is on targeting the bad guys. You know, what the Obama administration keeps getting wrong, is whenever anything bad happens they focus on law-abiding citizens, instead of focusing on the bad guys. We need to focus on radical Islamic terrorists, and we need to stop them before they carry out acts of terror.”
Rubio responded that Cruz is wrong, along with others who voted for the act. He added, “This is radical jihadist group that is increasingly sophisticated, and its ability, for example to radicalize American citizens, and its inability to exploit loopholes in our legal immigration system. It’s ability to capture to hold territory in the Middle East, as I outlined earlier, in multiple countries. This is not just the most capable, it is the most sophisticated terror threat we have ever faced. We are now at a time where we need more tools, not less tools. And that tool we lost, the metadata program, was a valuable tool that we no longer have at our disposal.”
Cruz answered, “I would note that Marco knows what he’s what he’s saying isn’t true. You know, Mark Levin wrote a column last week that says that the attack ads his super PAC is running that are saying the same thing, that they are knowingly false, and they are in fact Alinsky-like attacks like Barack Obama.” (Read more from “More Allegiance to Liberals, ‘Alinksy-Like Tactics’ Cruz, Rand Spar with Rubio on NSA, Immigration” HERE)
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AP FACT CHECK: Republican Debaters Go Astray
By Associated Press. A look at some of the claims in the latest Republican presidential debate and how they compare with the facts:
JEB BUSH: “We need to embed our troops in the Iraqi military.”
THE FACTS: The U.S. is already doing that.
U.S. special forces are working side by side with Iraqi forces in the fight against Islamic State militants and American military advisers and trainers are working with Iraqi troops in various locations. To be sure, Bush has called for an intensification of the military effort in a variety of ways, but debate viewers would not know from his comment that U.S. troops are already operating with Iraqi and Kurdish forces. (Read more from “AP FACT CHECK: Republican Debaters Go Astray” HERE)
When Jeb Bush wrapped up yet another response Tuesday night to a debate question pertaining to Donald Trump, the front-runner spoke up in defense of his less prominent rivals.
“I think it’s very sad,” Trump said to moderator Hugh Hewitt, “that CNN leads Jeb Bush … down a road by starting off virtually all of the questions [with] ‘Mr. Trump this …’ I think it’s very sad.”
He went on to recall the first debate, during which he said “the first number of questions” began with direct references to him . . .
The united front was short-lived, however, as Trump and Bush soon began bickering anew by questioning each other’s toughness. Candidates Carly Fiorina and John Kasich chimed in to break it up, representing those who feel such in-fighting among those in the primary race is counterproductive to the common goal of replacing Barack Obama with a Republican. (Read more from “Donald Trump Takes up for Jeb Bush in Debate Rant Against CNN Moderators” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-12-15 23:48:532016-04-11 10:55:01Donald Trump Takes up for Jeb Bush in Debate Rant Against CNN Moderators
The Army has already shrunk the force by 180,000 troops since withdrawing from Iraq in 2011, and it plans to further reduce its end strength in the coming years. The service is scheduled to reach an end strength of 450,000 troops by the end of fiscal 2017. If the Army continues to get hit with budget cuts, it could see a deeper cut down to 420,000. . .
[US Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley] said he’d prefer to keep as many troops as possible for as long as he is able, but reductions are moving forward. Therefore, he’s left to think about how the Army might be able to more effectively build up the force if necessary. To do that, Milley said: “I’m going to lean heavily on the [US Army National Guard]” . . .
If the active force is a certain size, according to Milley, it will most likely get consumed “pretty quickly” in any larger contingencies. “So we have to lean on the Guard,” he said, “but that means I have to get the readiness levels up to a level that is combat capable” . . .
One of the options Milley is examining is increasing the number of training days for some — not all — guardsmen to 60 or even 100 days a year “so it reduces the response time on the back end.” Quick mobilization is becoming more and more critical given the speed of communication and the technology available today, Milley said. . .
Also under consideration is maintaining a high number of leaders on active duty, Milley said. One concept is to build train-and-advise units for overseas deployment that consist of just brigade or battalion leadership. (Read more from “Due to Massive Personnel Cuts, US Army Moving to Failed Hollow Force Model” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-12-15 23:47:582016-04-11 10:55:01Due to Massive Personnel Cuts, US Army Moving to Failed Hollow Force Model
A secret U.S. policy that prohibits immigration officials from reviewing the social media messages of foreign citizens applying for U.S. visas was reportedly kept in place over fears of a civil liberties backlash and “bad public relations.”
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson refused in early 2014 to end the policy, even though several other officials in the organization pressed for such a policy change, ABC News reported Monday.
John Cohen, a former acting under-secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and currently a national security consultant for ABC News, said he pushed for a change in 2014 that would allow a review of social media messages posted publically as terror group followers increasingly turned to Twitter and Facebook.
“Immigration, security, law enforcement officials recognized at the time that it was important to more extensively review public social media postings because they offered potential insights into whether somebody was an extremist or potentially connected to a terrorist organization or a supporter of the movement,” Cohen, who left DHS in June 2014, told ABC News.
Cohen’s account comes as members of Congress question why U.S. officials failed to review the social media posts of San Bernardino terrorist Tashfeen Malik. (Read more from “Agents Reportedly Blocked by Secret US Policy from Looking at Social Media of Visa Applicants” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-12-15 23:46:492016-04-11 10:55:01Agents Reportedly Blocked by Secret US Policy from Looking at Social Media of Visa Applicants
At least 3 million foreign nationals were granted work permits, work visas, and green cards in 2013, with most being granted to individuals from Mexico, China, and India, according to the most recent data issued by the Congressional Research Service.
While the 2014 numbers have not been disclosed, recent statistics provided to Congress reveal that work permits continued to be issued at record numbers, according to congressional sources and statistics provided to the Washington Free Beacon.
This includes about 1 million green cards with work authorization, 1 million employment-based nonimmigrant visas for foreign workers, and 1.2 million work-permit authorizations for foreign nationals.
The disclosure of the ongoing uptick in visas and green cards comes amid a larger debate on Capitol Hill about tightening immigration restrictions in light of recent terror attacks and concerns about the U.S. workforce.
The total number of foreign workers in the United States stands at 26 million as of 2014, according to numbers issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Read more from “Obama Administration Approves 3 Million New Immigrant Workers in One Year” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-12-15 23:46:222016-04-11 10:55:01Obama Administration Approves 3 Million New Immigrant Workers in One Year
During the December 10 airing of Late Night with Seth Meyers, Democrat presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton said “92 percent” of Americans support “common sense measures” like opening up gun makers and sellers to lawsuits over gun crime.
Clinton said, “Most people in America–92 percent the last I checked…support these common sense measures–universal background checks, closing the gun show loophole, closing the online and Charleston loophole, and doing whatever we can to appeal the immunity from all liability that gun makers and sellers have.”
Her claims run counter to reality, and that is because she is seizing on lingering support for one type of gun control–expanded background checks–then transliterating that support to other types of gun control, as well as to punitive actions toward the 15 billion dollar gun industry. Breitbart News previously reported that Americans in many regions of our country have somehow failed to recognize that expanded background checks are gun control’s Trojan Horse. In other words, expanded–or universal–background checks are insidious measures that lead to the passage of more and more more gun control. (Read more from “Clinton: 92 Percent of Americans Support Suing Gun Manufacturers for Gun Crime” HERE)
