Rick Perry to Announce Presidential Run Next Month

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rickperry_5Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry has chosen Dallas to officially declare his second run for the Republican presidential nomination on June 4.

For months, Perry has said that he would announce his decision in May or June. But his constant travel to the early contest states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida has left little doubt of his intentions . . .

Unlike four years ago, when he rushed into the contest after seeing he could raise quick money and was leading in polls, Perry enters this contest as an underdog.

He is polling in single digits, but again unlike his last run, he has spent more than a year in preparation. He has consulted weekly with conservative experts on foreign relations and economic policy. He has assembled advisers and campaign teams in the early states and has even taken tutoring in public speaking . . .

In the 2016 contest, he will begin from behind, not only trying to push his message through the similar-sounding policies advanced by a large pack of candidates, but he also must erase memories of his previous debate flops and campaign stumbles. (Read more from “Rick Perry to Announce Presidential Run Next Month” HERE)

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Students Caught Screening Fifty Shades of Grey During Class

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Fifty-Gray-posterPortions of “Fifty Shades of Grey,” a controversial movie depicting graphic acts of sexual violence, was screened in a West Virginia classroom this week.

The filmography request was made by a group of Hampshire County students who asked their teacher, who was ignorant of the film’s content, if they could watch it as a reward for good work.

“Fortunately, an assistant principal walked by and saw what they were doing,” said school principal Jeff Woofter. “They got there 10 minutes after it started and shut it down” . . .

Citing school policy, Woofter went on to say he couldn’t discuss whether or not disciplinary action would be taken against the teacher or students. He declined to give any more information.

The movie, which earned nearly $600 million in worldwide ticket sales, is based on a book of the same title. The first in a trilogy of what originally started out as erotic fan fiction, the book catalogs the exploits of plain-Jane Anastasia Steele, a recent college graduate, and the devilishly good-looking Christian Grey, a young business magnate. (Read more from “Students Caught Screening Fifty Shades of Grey During Class” HERE)

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Feds to Use Social Media to Combat Complaints About Michelle Obama Lunches

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Photo Credit: Twitter

Photo Credit: Twitter

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is pushing back against a campaign criticizing First Lady Michelle Obama’s school lunch rules by showing one picture of a somewhat appetizing child’s lunch.

“They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and in the digital age we have ample opportunity to document and broadcast every moment, meeting and meal,” wrote Deborah Kane, the national director of the USDA Farm to School Program, in a blog post Thursday.

“We have all seen those unappetizing photos of food served at school that quickly go viral,” she said. “A lonesome whole wheat bun atop a sad fish fillet; a mysterious-looking meat mixture served next to an apple. It’s natural to ask, ‘Is this what they serve for lunch!?’”

Photo Credit: Twitter

Photo Credit: Twitter

“No, it’s really not,” Kane said . . .

“Beautiful meals like this are what’s for lunch today and every day in schools across the country,” the caption reads below a picture of a meal of broccoli, corn, some sort of rice, an apple, bun, low-fat chocolate milk, and a fish patty the size of the young child’s head. (Read more from “Feds to Use Social Media to Combat Complaints About Michelle Obama Lunches” HERE)

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Veterans Affairs Improperly Spent $6 Billion Annually, Senior Official Says

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Veterans_Health_Care-0da50

vasignThe Department of Veterans Affairs has been spending at least $6 billion a year in violation of federal contracting rules to pay for medical care and supplies, wasting taxpayer money and putting veterans at risk, according to an internal memo written by the agency’s senior official for procurement.

In a 35-page document addressed to VA Secretary Robert McDonald, the official accuses other agency leaders of “gross mismanagement” and making a “mockery” of federal acquisition laws that require competitive bidding and proper contracts.

Jan R. Frye, deputy assistant secretary for acquisition and logistics, describes a culture of “lawlessness and chaos” at the Veterans Health Administration, the massive health-care system for 8.7 million veterans.

“Doors are swung wide open for fraud, waste and abuse,” he writes in the March memo, which was obtained by The Washington Post. He adds, “I can state without reservation that VA has and continues to waste millions of dollars by paying excessive prices for goods and services due to breaches of Federal laws.”

Frye describes in detail a series of practices that he says run afoul of federal rules, including the widespread use of purchase cards, which are usually meant as a convenience for minor purchases of up to $3,000, to buy billions of dollars worth of medical supplies without contracts. In one example, he says that up to $1.2 billion in prosthetics were bought using purchase cards without contracts during an 18-month period that ended last year. (Read more from “Veterans Affairs Improperly Spent $6 Billion Annually, Senior Official Says” HERE)

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Alaska Medicaid Expansion Would Significantly Increase Taxpayer-Funded Abortions

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baby-cute-pictures-17This morning the Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI), the education and research arm of the national pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List, published a new paper examining how expansion of the Medicaid program in Alaska will significantly increase the number of abortions in the state. The analysis comes as the Alaska legislature considers a law that would expand Medicaid enrollment.

Alaska is one of 17 states that funds abortion through Medicaid. According to CLI Associate Scholar Michael J. New, Ph.D. who authored the paper, the expansion would increase the state abortion rate in at least four ways. The expansion will:

• Add between 10,000 and 15,000 women of childbearing age onto the program, which already funds a high percentage of abortions in Alaska.

• Result in more Medicaid-eligible women leaving non-abortion-covering insurance plans to enroll in the abortion-covering Medicaid program.

• End the incentive for women to carry their children to term since an expansion would allow for childless low-income women who seek an abortion to remain on Medicaid.

• Increase the amount of taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider whose Alaska affiliates perform a substantial amount of the state’s abortions.

The full text of the new paper may be found here.

“Alaska already has one of the highest rates of publicly funded abortions in the country,” said Chuck Donovan, president of the Charlotte Lozier Institute. “Expanding the Medicaid program will encourage and incentivize abortion for low-income women and further devalue life in the state. Overall, Dr. New’s analysis validates prior concerns from pro-life groups about an increase of taxpayer-funded abortions under Obamacare, particularly when those states expand their Medicaid program under the health care law.”

An initial analysis by CLI from 2013 calculated that overall about 6 million women could potentially gain coverage for abortion under Obamacare, with half of those due to state Medicaid expansion. In 2014, CLI joined with Family Research Council to launch ObamacareAbortion.com, an online resource for the general public to make up for the administration’s lack of transparency on abortion coverage in health insurance plans.

Charlotte Lozier Institute was launched in 2011 as the education and research arm of Susan B. Anthony List. CLI is a hub for research and public policy analysis on some of the most pressing issues facing the United States and nations around the world. The Institute is named for a feminist physician known for her commitment to the sanctity of human life and equal career and educational opportunities for women. (See ” Alaska Medicaid Expansion Would Significantly Increase Taxpayer-Funded Abortions”, originally posted HERE)

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Trump Says He May Run for POTUS but Gave $100K+ to Clinton Foundation?

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

By Alex Griswold. Potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate and attention-seeking businessman Donald Trump has donated at least $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation, despite his criticism of the foundation’s dealings.

During a New Hampshire campaign stop back in April, Trump railed against Hillary Clinton and the accusation that the former secretary of state traded political favors in favor for donations to the Clinton Foundation . . .

What Trump neglected to mention was his own donations to the foundation. Trump is listed on the Clinton Foundation’s donor page as having given somewhere between $100,001 and $250,000. Likewise, his wife Ivanka Trump is listed as having given somewhere between $5001 and $10,000. (Read more from “Trump Says He May Run but Donated at Least $100K to Clinton Foundation” HERE)

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Trump Says He’s ‘Very Much Inclined’ to Run for President

By John DiStaso. Donald Trump, saying he is “very much inclined” to run for president, told about 300 Granite Staters at New England College on Monday afternoon that Hillary Clinton’s actions involving her family’s foundation are “criminal.”

Most in the audience at NEC’s Great Hall at the Simon Center were students. The real estate mogul held their attention for nearly an hour in the third of a four-stop visit. College officials said it was one the largest crowds ever for an event in the center.

Trump, who also visited Salem, Hudson and Concord on Monday, said Clinton “could go to jail for this.

“If this were Richard Nixon or a Republican,” he said, “if this were almost anybody, there would have been an investigation already” into allegations there is a connection between contributions to her family’s Clinton Foundation and actions she took as secretary of state. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Strong Push to Yank Biased Judge From Sheriff Joe Case

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

A federal judge is being asked to remove himself from a racial-profiling case against Sheriff Joe Arpaio because of “unethical misconduct and a conflict of interest” after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday refused to take the extraordinary step of intervening and ordering his removal.

The appellate judges had been asked by a whistleblower, Dennis Montgomery, who was drawn into the case to step in and remove the “runaway jurist.”

But the case was returned to Judge G. Murray Snow’s court, where he is facing accusations that his wife blurted out in his own courtroom his intention to bring down Arpaio.

The filing with the federal appeals court cited the refusal of the judge to remove himself from the case, which alleges the Arizona sheriff’s office racially profiles Latinos. . .

The emergency petition filed with the 9th Circuit asked that Snow be disqualified “for alleged egregious and continuing ethical violations and extra-judicial bias and prejudice in the ongoing contempt proceedings.”

According to a statement released with the motion, “Judge Snow has unethically turned the case into a personal vindictive ‘witch-hunt’ to allegedly cover up his wife’s statements quoting the judge as intending to harm Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s chances for reelection in 2016 as sheriff of Maricopa County through the contempt proceedings which Judge Snow has been holding.” (Read more from “Strong Push to Yank Judge From Sheriff Joe Case” HERE)

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House Votes Overwhelmingly to End NSA’s Mass Collection of Phone Records

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1000 (1)The House overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan bill Wednesday to dial back the once-secret National Security Agency program that collects and stores data from nearly every phone call or cellphone call dialed or received in the United States.

The bill passed 338-88, with both Democratic and Republican majorities determined to rein in a domestic intelligence program that sparked sharp concerns in Congress about violations of privacy and civil liberties.

The House bill faces a hurdle in the Senate, however, where GOP leaders are backing a bill to renew the controversial NSA program through 2020 either unchanged or with minor amendments.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, has said he will filibuster if the Senate is asked to renew the bill without changes. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., another staunch opponent of the NSA program, has vowed to filibuster as well.

“The overwhelming vote in the House should send a strong signal to Senate Republican leaders that momentum is on the side of surveillance reform,” Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., who also opposes the current program, said in a statement. (Read more from “House Votes Overwhelmingly to End NSA’s Mass Collection of Phone Records” HERE)

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George Stephanopoulos – Masquerading as Neutral Journalist – Caught with $75k in Contributions to Clinton Foundation

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Photo Credit: Politico

Photo Credit: Politico

By Dylan Byers. ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos has given $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation in recent years, charitable contributions that he did not publicly disclose while reporting on the Clintons or their nonprofit organization, the On Media blog has learned.

In 2012, 2013 and 2014, Stephanopoulos made $25,000 donations to the 501 nonprofit founded by former President Bill Clinton, the foundation’s records show. Stephanopoulos never disclosed this information to viewers, even when interviewing author Peter Schweizer last month about his book “Clinton Cash,” which alleges that donations to the foundation may have influenced some of Hillary Clinton’s actions as secretary of state.

In a statement to the On Media blog on Thursday, Stephanopoulos apologized and said that he should have disclosed the donations to ABC News and its viewers.

“I made charitable donations to the Foundation in support of the work they’re doing on global AIDS prevention and deforestation, causes I care about deeply,” he said. “I thought that my contributions were a matter of public record. However, in hindsight, I should have taken the extra step of personally disclosing my donations to my employer and to the viewers on air during the recent news stories about the Foundation. I apologize.”

Stephanopoulos is the chief anchor and chief political correspondent for ABC News, as well as the co-anchor of ABC’s “Good Morning America” and host of “This Week,” its Sunday morning public affairs program. Prior to joining ABC News, he served as communications director and senior adviser for policy and strategy to President Clinton. He also served as communications director on Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. (Read more from “George Stephanopoulos Discloses Massive Contributions to Clinton Foundation” HERE)

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Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Manager Interned for George Stephanopoulos

By Brent Scher. George Stephanopoulos thanked Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook in the acknowledgement section of his 1999 tell-all memoir All Too Human.

Stephanopoulos’ book, described as “a new-generation political memoir” of a man “who got his hands on the levers of awesome power at an early age,” was written after he left the Clinton administration and returned to his alma mater Columbia to be a visiting professor.

Mook was an undergrad student at Columbia during Stephanopoulos’ brief tenure and was already politically active. He was a member of the College Democrats and was active in Democratic politics in his home state of Vermont.

Mook was also part of the team of interns who worked under Stephanopolous’ research assistant at Columbia, responsible for “reviewing thousands of pages of public records and making sure I got my facts straight,” wrote Stephanopolous. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Missouri House Speaker John Diehl Resigning Over Inappropriate Texts With Teenage Intern [+video]

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Photo Credit: The Kansas City Star

Photo Credit: The Kansas City Star

House Speaker John Diehl, arguably the most powerful lawmaker in Missouri, announced Thursday he will resign from office. His announcement came just a day after The Star revealed he’d exchanged sexually suggestive texts with a 19-year-old legislative intern.

Diehl, who will also step down from his legislative seat from St. Louis County, is expected to make the decision official [today].

“I have acknowledged making a serious error in judgment by sending the text messages. It was wrong and I am truly sorry,” Diehl said in a written statement Thursday afternoon. “Too often, we hear leaders say they’re sorry but are unwilling to accept the consequences. I am willing to face the consequences.”

Hours after Diehl announced he would resign, Republicans gathered to pick Todd Richardson of Poplar Bluff as the next House speaker. Richardson is the majority floor leader. His rise to speaker still requires a House vote, likely Friday.

Diehl had issued a statement Wednesday afternoon admitting the relationship and asking for forgiveness. He told news media gathered outside his office later that night that he had no intention of resigning. (Read more from “Missouri House Speaker John Diehl Resigning Over Texts With Intern” HERE)

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