In Victory for Free Speech, NAACP Loses Court Battle to Silence Black Pro-Life Activist

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Photo Credit: Town Hall Ryan Bomberger, co-founder of The Radiance Foundation, has a penchant for speaking the truth—on abortion, civil rights, and a host of other social and cultural issues. If there’s one thing the Left hates, however, it’s the truth.

So when Bomberger, an Emmy-award winning creative director, wrote a snarky column in January of 2013 about the NAACP’s position on abortion that parodied the civil rights group’s name, referring to it as the National Association for the Abortion of Colored People, they weren’t too pleased, and thus, the legal battle began.

One month after the column ran on LifeNews.com, the NAACP threatened to sue Bomberger, The Radiance Foundation, and the pro-life website for what it claimed was “trademark infringement, confusion and dilution.” Bomberger then filed a declaratory action in federal court to determine that he and his organization were protected under the First Amendment so the threat could be dismissed. Shockingly, the request was denied. As Bomberger explains:

In federal court, the once great civil rights group convinced Judge Raymond Jackson to disregard our civil rights as well as all of the documentation proving how radically pro-abortion the NAACP has become. The judge ruled against The Radiance Foundation, declaring that the parody we employed isn’t, technically, a parody because he didn’t find it to be “funny”. So, he banned us from even mentioning the parodied name or ever parodying the NAACP’s name in the future. Contradicting all presented evidence, Judge Raymond Jackson declared “the NAACP has no formal position or policy regarding abortion” despite the fact that the NAACP itself declared, in its own press release, that it “took an historic pro-choice position” back on February 24, 2004.

Fortunately, Bomberger and his foundation didn’t stop there but took the case, which was defended by Alliance Defending Freedom, before the Fourth Circuit of Appeals. Today, more than two years after the whole ordeal began, Bomberger, The Radiance Foundation and the First Amendment, won a decisive victory in federal court. (Read more from “In Victory for Free Speech, NAACP Loses Court Battle to Silence Black Pro-Life Activist” HERE)

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North Korea’s Missile Launch Photos Are Fakes, US Says

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Photo Credit: Reuters Photos showing a North Korean missile launched from a submarine were manipulated by state propagandists, and the isolated country may still be years away from developing the technology, a top US military official said Tuesday.

North Korea, heavily sanctioned by the United States and United Nations for its missile and nuclear tests, said May 9 it had successfully conducted an underwater test-fire of a submarine-launched ballistic missile, which, if true, would indicate progress in its pursuit of building missile-equipped submarines.

On Wednesday, the North warned Washington not to challenge its sovereign right to boost military deterrence and boasted of its ability to miniaturize nuclear warheads, a claim it has made before and which has been widely questioned by experts and never verified.

But Pyongyang is still “many years” from developing submarine-launched ballistic missiles, US Admiral James Winnefeld told an audience at the Centre for Strategic & International Studies in Washington on Tuesday.

“They have not gotten as far as their clever video editors and spinmeisters would have us believe,” said Winnefeld, who is vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (Read more from “North Korea’s Missile Launch Photos Are Fakes, US Says” HERE)

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CIA Releases Files Showing Bin Laden Bent on Spectacular US Attack Until the End

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By Dan De Luce. Hunkered down in his Pakistani compound, Osama bin Laden pleaded with his followers to stay focused on attacking the United States instead of being dragged into Muslim infighting.

Documents that were declassified on Wednesday shed new light on the mindset of Al-Qaeda’s founder, his debates over tactics, his anxiety over Western spying and his fixation with the group’s media image.

“The focus should be on killing and fighting the American people and their representatives,” the late Al-Qaeda figurehead wrote.

The letter was among thousands of files found by US Navy SEALs on May 2, 2011 when they descended on Bin Laden’s hideout in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad and shot him dead.

US intelligence agencies have now declassified more than 100 of these documents taken from Bin Laden’s archive, after lawmakers ordered the move and critics accused the CIA of withholding material. (Read more from “Bin Laden Bent on Spectacular US Attack Until the End: Files” HERE)
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Bin Laden: Focus on Killing Americans, not Each Other

By Maxwell Tani. Fearful for his death in 2008, Osama bin Laden had big plans for his family.

In a video letter released by the CIA on Wednesday, the former 9/11 mastermind ordered his son to fight against the West in the event that the elder bin Laden was killed.

“Jihad is an obligated duty for all adults, so he has to conduct jihad,” bin Laden said of his son Usama. . .

From the strategic and theological discussions to the mundane details of domestic funding and security measures, the documents show the man behind 9/11 preoccupied with once again attacking the West in a spectacular fashion.

“The focus should be on killing and fighting the American people and their representatives,” Bin Laden wrote in one of the newly revealed documents. (Read more from this story about OBL’s plans for a spectacular attack HERE)

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Another French Mayor Says to Hell With Islam, and Posts up a Picture of a French Crusader With These Words

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Another French mayor, named Didier Barachet, is saying to hell with Islam and has posted up a portrait of a French crusader with these words:

We Will Never Submit To islam! Respect Our culture, Our Traditions, Our Values, And Our country, Otherwise Leave It!

This was done after another mayor, Robert Chardon, declared that Islam should be banned from the nation of France.

Photo Credit Facebook

According to one French report:

Didier Barachet, UMP mayor of Ardentes (Indre), relayed an anti-Islam message on his Facebook account. … Where the image appears there is a knight clutching his sword, alongside this message: “Never, we will submit to Islam!” “Respect our culture, our traditions, our values and my country, otherwise leave it!”

(Read more from “Another French Mayor Says to Hell With Islam, and Posts up a Picture of a French Crusader With These Words” HERE)

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After Russian Special Forces Soldiers Captured, Ukraine Says it’s Fighting a Real War Against Russia

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Photo Credit: Business Insider Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko sparked fresh Kremlin fury by warning that his crisis-torn country was fighting a “real war” against Russian aggressors that could escalate at any time.

The pro-Western leader said the weekend capture of two purported Russian special forces members proved the separatist uprising in the industrial east of Ukraine was a guise for a Moscow-orchestrated campaign aimed at breaking up his ex-Soviet state.

“This is not a fight with Russian-backed separatists, this is a real war with Russia,” the 49-year-old Ukrainian leader told the BBC . . .

Ukraine’s military on Tuesday showed off two wounded Russians who had been taken prisoner during a firefight in Lugansk — a blue-collar region that together with neighbouring Donetsk revolted against Kiev’s shift toward the West 13 months ago.

The men testified during a taped interrogation that they entered the war zone nearly two months ago as part of a 200-strong reconnaissance unit from the Russian army’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU). (Read more from “After Russian Special Forces Soldiers Captured, Ukraine Says it’s Fighting a Real War Against Russia” HERE)

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The Mystery Behind the Air Force’s Classified Space Plane

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The last time the Air Force’s super secretive X-37B space plane launched, it didn’t come down until almost two years later–674 days to be exact. On Wednesday, it launched again, and was scheduled to stay in orbit for 270 days. Or maybe more.

No one knows for sure because the largely classified project is shrouded in mystery. The Air Force will only say that it will test a new, experimental thruster. The rocket carrying the space craft will also deliver a small satellite that would fly using a “solar sail.” But the broader mission of the Boeing-made X-37B, which looks like a miniature version of a the space shuttle, is not publicly known.

Space has become an increasingly important part of national security, a realm the Pentagon and the intelligence community is keenly focused on. And the ability to keep an unmanned space craft that could circle the Earth for months at a time and then land on an airstrip so that it could be used again could have all kinds of potential, from keeping an eye on the weather as well as the enemy.

“Space is so vitally important to everything we do,” Maj. Gen. Tom Masiello, the commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory, Space and Missile Systems Center, said in a recent statement. “Secure comms, ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance], missile warning, weather prediction, precision navigation and timing all rely on it, and the domain is increasingly contested.”

In Congressional testimony last month, Air Force Lt. Gen John Raymond said that space has become a “warfighting domain,” and he warned that other countries, particularly, China and Russia, “remain concerns for us as we assess threats in the space domain.” Officials have said the countries have the ability to blind satellites with lasers or blow them up with missiles. (Read more from “The Mystery Behind the Air Force’s Classified Space Plane” HERE)

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Feds Spent $100 Billion on Food Assistance Last Year

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Photo Credit: AP ImagesThe federal government spent $100 billion providing food assistance to Americans last year, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The lion’s share of spending comes from the food stamp program, which gave benefits to an average 46 million Americans in 2014, at a cost of $74.6 billion, according to a testimony from the GAO’s Director of Education, Workforce, and Income Security Kay E. Brown before the House Subcommittee on Nutrition Wednesday.

The national school lunch program was second, costing $11.3 billion, followed by the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) at $7.1 billion . . .

Brown said there is a potential for overlap and “inefficient use of federal funds” due to the government’s “complex network of 18 food assistance programs, administered by three federal agencies,” which are unsure how effective the programs are.

“In 2010, research GAO reviewed suggested that participation in seven of these programs was associated with positive outcomes, such as improving nutrition among low-income households,” Brown said. “Little was known about the effectiveness of the remaining 11.” (Read more from “Feds Spent $100 Billion on Food Assistance Last Year” HERE)

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Investigators Check Amtrak Engineer’s Cellphone Records

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Photo Credit: FlickrThe National Transportation Safety Board is combing through the cellphone records of the engineer at the controls of the crashed Amtrak train, and said he was using it the day of the deadly derailment, the agency said in a statement Wednesday.

“Although the records appear to indicate that calls were made, text messages sent, and data used on the day of the accident, investigators have not yet made a determination if there was any phone activity during the time the train was being operated,” the NTSB said.

The board will be checking the time stamps on Brandon Bostian’s phone to see if he was using it just before the crash that killed eight people and injured over 200 more.

There were no issues with the train’s signals systems at the time, the NTSB also said.

Investigators have also interviewed the engineer of the SEPTA train that came to an emergency stop when it was struck by an object. That motorman said Bostian announced on the radio, “hot track rail two” to warn him that he was about to pass the train. (Read more from “Investigators Check Amtrak Engineer’s Cellphone Records” HERE)

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A Quote That May Come Back to Haunt Rand Paul

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When Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) induced an abortion-related gaffe from Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, pro-life activists hailed him as one of their most effective messengers in presidential politics — but he doesn’t intend to build his 2016 campaign around such fights.

“I didn’t run for office because of the social issues,” Paul said Monday during a question-and-answer session with conservative-radio host Dom Giordano at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia. “It wasn’t what got me to leave my practice. I ran for office mainly because I became concerned that we were going to destroy the country with debt. That we would borrow so much money that we would just destroy the currency . . . There’s also a chance that we get so far overdrawn that we have a calamity. In 2008, we were very close to a calamity.”

The exchange began when Giordano asked if, in light of the House passage of the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, abortion should be “handled” at the state level or at the federal level under the Fourteenth Amendment. (Read more from “A Quote That May Come Back to Haunt Rand Paul” HERE)

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Rand Paul Filibusters NSA Surveillance in Congress

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United States Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) vows to filibuster any attempt in Congress to extend the eavesdropping powers provided to the government through the US Patriot Act before they expire at the end of the month.

Sen. Paul began speaking out against government surveillance on the floor of the Senate at around 1:18 pm ET on Wednesday, saying “I will not let the Patriot Act, the most unpatriotic of acts, go unchallenged.”

Provisions in the anti-terrorism law, passed in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, are set to sunset on June 1 unless Congress extends them before then. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), the Senate majority leader, has advocated for extending the National Security Agency’s ability to conduct such surveillance in certain cases while an alternative solution is sought.

As the end-of-month deadline nears, Senator Paul on Wednesday said he would launch a filibuster to ensure the spy powers are not reauthorized . . .

Earlier in the day, the Department of Justice circulated a memo on Capitol Hill warning lawmakers to act swiftly and be prepared to pull the plug on Sec. 215 of the Patriot Act this week. The memo said this was necessary in order to avoid complications that could arise in the event the program is not renewed before the end of the month. A federal appeals court ruled two weeks ago that Sec. 215 does not authorize the National Security Agency to collect phone records in bulk, contrary to the government’s current interpretation, dealing the biggest blow yet to the previously secret surveillance program first exposed to the public in 2013 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. (Read more from “Rand Paul Filibusters NSA Surveillance in Congress” HERE)

Editor’s note: RT News is Russian government affiliated site that is not immune from propagandizing issues.

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