Did Super PACs Violate Election Laws in 2014 Midterms? Twitter Offers Clues

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Twitter-bird_standard_600x400Republicans and outside groups covertly conspired to skirt campaign finance laws using one of the most public social media available: Twitter.

That’s according to a report by CNN’s Chris Moody, “How the GOP used Twitter to stretch election laws,” that suggests that Republicans and Republican-oriented super PACs and advocacy groups used Twitter accounts to share internal polling data ahead of the midterm elections, “a practice that raises questions about whether they violated campaign finance laws that prohibit coordination,” writes CNN.

The strategy appears to be something out of a spy movie.

Anonymous Twitter accounts, including @TruthTrain14 and @brunogianelli44, named after the fictional character in “The West Wing” who pushed for the use of “soft money” in campaign funding, were set up in the months leading up to November’s midterm elections. Enigmatic messages were periodically tweeted; inscrutable to most, they conveyed internal polling data, which could signal to outside groups where to devote campaign resources.

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FCC Official Warns Obama-Backed Net Neutrality Plan Would Bring 'Immediate' Internet Tax

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Photo Credit: REUTERS

Photo Credit: REUTERS

Internet users would be forced to pay a new federal tax on their monthly bills if the government approves regulations recently endorsed by President Obama, a member of the Federal Communications Commission predicts.

Commissioner Mike O’Reilly addressed what’s known as “net neutrality” at a Washington seminar on Friday. He spoke after Obama backed stricter rules by calling for preventing service providers from charging more for speedier service and for regulating them like telecommunications companies under a decades-old law.

That law requires telecommunications companies to pay into the FCC’s “Universal Service Fund” — and would likely require the same of Internet companies. But O’Reilly says history clearly shows that the fees would quickly be “passed off” to customers, just like they are now on monthly phone bills.

“Consumers of these services would face an immediate increase in their Internet bills,” O’Reilly said Friday during the seminar held by the non-partisan Free State Foundation. “Let’s accept a truism: Consumers pay [the fund], not companies.”

O’Reilly, a Republican on the five-member commission, also quoted scholar and net neutrality guru Tim Wu in saying, “Ultimately, consumers always pay for everything, no matter what we say otherwise.”

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Ebola Nurse Demands That You Stop Calling Her ‘Ebola Nurse’

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Kaci Hickox is not the Ebola Nurse, says Ebola Nurse Kaci Hickox. She is now insisting that the nickname must observe a voluntary quarantine, or else she will keep complaining about it.

Writing in (of course) The Guardian, Hickox seethes:

I never had Ebola. I never had symptoms of Ebola. I tested negative for Ebola the first night I stayed in New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s private prison in Newark. I am now past the incubation period – meaning that I will not develop symptoms of Ebola.

I never had Ebola, so please stop calling me “the Ebola Nurse” – now!

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Charles Manson Gets Marriage License

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Photo Credit: AP / California Department of Corrections

Photo Credit: AP / California Department of Corrections

Mass murderer Charles Manson plans to marry a 26-year-old woman who left her Midwestern home and spent the past nine years trying to help exonerate him.

Afton Elaine Burton, the raven-haired bride-to-be, said she loves the man convicted in the notorious murders of seven people, including pregnant actress Sharon Tate.

No date has been set, but a wedding coordinator has been assigned by the prison to handle the nuptials, and the couple has until early February to get married before they would have to reapply.

The Kings County marriage license, viewed Monday by The Associated Press, was issued Nov. 7 for the 80-year-old Manson and Burton, who lives in Corcoran – the site of the prison – and maintains several websites advocating his innocence.

Burton, who goes by the name “Star,” told the AP that she and Manson will be married next month.

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'Duck Dynasty' Vegas Musical to Premier Next Year

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Photo Credit: Breitbart

Photo Credit: Breitbart

The Duck Dynasty family is getting its own musical.

According to Variety, the story of the Robertson family will serve as the inspiration for The Duck Commander Family Musical, a new theater show that will open early next year at the Rio hotel and casino in Las Vegas.

The 90-minute show will reportedly be produced by Michael David, who previously produced the Four Seasons-themed smash hit Jersey Boys.

“The show will end up challenging the views and assumptions of people across the political spectrum, more than most theater does,” David told the New York Times. “The Robertsons are so unusual, their story so juicy, and theater shouldn’t be limited to telling stories about people you resemble or revere.”

“We’ve enjoyed the process of making a musical alongside the team who is interested in telling the Robertson family story from an outside perspective,” Duck Commander CEO Willie Robertson told the Times.

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Planned Parenthood Botches Another Abortion, Woman Rushed to Hospital After Massive Blood Loss

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plannedparenthood137By Eric Scheidler.

On October 25, 2014, an ambulance was called to the massive Planned Parenthood abortion facility in Aurora, Illinois. The Pro-Life Action League obtained the audio of the 911 call through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Video of the ambulance departing Planned Parenthood was shot by a local activist.

The 911 call reveals that a client of Planned Parenthood was hemorrhaging after her abortion—a rare instance of Planned Parenthood actually admitting the medical problem they’re calling about.

Earlier this year, a 911 operator rebuked a Planned Parenthood staffer at this same facility for not providing adequate patient information. In 2012, the Planned Parenthood center in Chicago didn’t even bother to call 911 after botching an abortion on a woman named Tonya Reaves so badly that she died.

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mandygittler3Abortionist Applies for Medical License, You Won’t Believe What She Left Off Her Application

By Cheryl Sullenger.

Mandy Gittler has something to hide. On July 20, 2012, she reported to work as usual at a Chicago Planned Parenthood abortion clinic. But what happened next was anything but routine.

That day, Gittler fatally botched a second trimester abortion on a young African-American woman named Tonya Reaves. While Reaves’ life ebbed away, Gittler delayed her transport to the hospital for 5½ hours. By then it was too late. Reaves died from internal injuries that had been inflicted upon her by Gittler during two consecutive incomplete abortion procedures that ruptured her uterus and caused internal hemorrhaging.

Reaves’ family sued and on January 24, 2014, they settled their malpractice case with Gittler’s employer, Planned Parenthood of Illinois, for the significant amount of $2 million, most of which will be paid to Reaves’ surviving young son, Alvin Jones, III, throughout his life.

That incident is certainly not the kind of thing that an abortionist wants on his or her resume.

Later, Gittler shut down her private Chicago abortion facility and took her abortion act on the road, hiring on at a Planned Parenthood abortion facility in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and an independent abortion facility in Peoria, Illinois.

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Support for Obamacare Drops to New Low

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According to a new Gallup poll, only 37 percent of Americans approve of the president’s signature law, its lowest approval rating ever.

Additionally, 56 percent of Americans disapprove of the law, its highest disapproval rate.

gallupocare

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Defense: Guantanamo Detainee Is Soldier, Exempt From War Crimes Charges

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Photo Credit: REUTERS

Photo Credit: REUTERS

A U.S. military lawyer for a Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detainee described as an al-Qaida commander said on Monday he may be classified as a soldier under international war rules – and therefore exempt from prosecution – so charges against him should be dropped.

Marine Lt. Col. Tom Jasper asked a judge to dismiss multiple charges against Abd al Hadi al-Iraqi, accused of commanding attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan, killing civilians and conspiring to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

Jasper said Article 5 of the Third Geneva Conventions of 1949 might classify Hadi al-Iraqi as a “lawful combatant” and, as a prisoner of war, grant him immunity from prosecution for lawful acts of war.

“The bottom line, sir, is that at this point Hadi al-Iraqi could not be tried by this tribunal,” Jasper told the judge during the hearing at the Guantanamo Bay prison that was shown over closed-circuit television at Fort Meade, Maryland, media center.

More evidence and hearings are needed to define Hadi al-Iraqi’s status, Jasper said.

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Liberals Love Rand Paul

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Some liberals, fed up with Democratic waffling on issues like military intervention and corporate welfare, are finding something attractive in Republican Sen. Rand Paul’s brand of libertarianism.

In an op-ed for HuffPost on Monday, H.A. Goodman explained why, even though he identifies as “a liberal Democrat” and has “never voted for a Republican,” he plans to vote for Paul in the 2016 presidential elections.

“On issues that affect the long-term survival of this country,” Goodman says, “Rand Paul has shown that he bucks both the Republican and Democratic penchant for succumbing to public opinion, an overreaction to the terror threat, and a gross indifference to an egregious assault on our rights as citizens.”

Goodman applauds Paul, for instance, for questioning the legality of President Barack Obama’s decision to quietly increase troop deployments in Iraq amid an ongoing bombing campaign against ISIS. The deployment came “without a peep from the anti-war left,” but as Goodman points out, “the reaction would have been entirely different from liberals throughout the country” if it had been made by a Republican president. “

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ISIS Claims Beheading US Aid Worker

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Photo Credit: © Sera / Handout, EPA

Photo Credit: © Sera / Handout, EPA

By Ramadan Al-Fatash and Anne K Walters, dpa.

The Islamic State extremist group released a video on Sunday purporting to show the aftermath of the beheading of US hostage Peter Kassig, triggering an international outcry.

The video shows a masked fighter clad in black with a severed head lying on the ground that he claims is that of Kassig, a 26-year-old US aid worker captured by militants in Syria in October last year.

US President Barack Obama later confirmed the death in a statement offering condolences to the family.

The killing is the fifth execution of a Western hostage by Islamic State militants.

Kassig, a former Army Ranger, founded the aid group SERA (Special Emergency Response and Assistance) that was focussed on operating in areas where other groups were unable to work. The group provided medical training and logistical support as well as coordinated aid deliveries, but had “temporarily ceased its operations” due to the security situation in Syria, according to the group’s website.

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Peter Kassig death: A new Isis video, but a different ending. What could it mean?

By DAVID USBORNE.

The Islamic State extremist group released a video on Sunday purporting to show the aftermath of the beheading of US hostage Peter Kassig, triggering an international outcry.

The video shows a masked fighter clad in black with a severed head lying on the ground that he claims is that of Kassig, a 26-year-old US aid worker captured by militants in Syria in October last year.

US President Barack Obama later confirmed the death in a statement offering condolences to the family.

The killing is the fifth execution of a Western hostage by Islamic State militants.

Kassig, a former Army Ranger, founded the aid group SERA (Special Emergency Response and Assistance) that was focussed on operating in areas where other groups were unable to work. The group provided medical training and logistical support as well as coordinated aid deliveries, but had “temporarily ceased its operations” due to the security situation in Syria, according to the group’s website.

Read more from this story HERE.