Unlikely GOP Tax Plan the Result of Changing Politics

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Photo Credit: AP/J. Scott ApplewhiteThe tax reform plan from Michigan Rep. Dave Camp was unimaginable as a Republican document just a few years ago, the result of a shifting political landscape that has seen the triumph of President Obama’s tax message and the influence of conservative populism.

The House Ways and Means Committee chairman sought a blueprint that was impervious to charges that it would benefit the wealthy and burden the middle class. That was a direct reaction to the beating Republicans took on the issue in the 2012 presidential contest, with Obama’s “fairness” pitch to increase taxes on the so-called wealthy resonating better than GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s traditional Republican proposal for across-the-board cuts to stimulate economic growth.

Breaking with GOP orthodoxy, Camp also wanted a plan that, while lowering tax rates for all income brackets, received a “revenue neutral” score from Congress’ nonpartisan accounting agencies. Camp wanted to avoid potent Democratic attacks that tax cuts increase the deficit and cost Washington money it needs for cherished programs. Republicans had long dismissed the concept of paying for tax cuts on the grounds that they create jobs and boost revenue, while asserting that the government’s money belongs to the people and reducing their tax load shouldn’t require offsets.

Camp’s draft has received perhaps the most attention for proposing to simplify the tax code by scaling back typically politically sacred exemptions, such as the mortgage interest deduction popular with voters and the housing industry. For years, Republicans — including Camp — promoted these carve-outs as crucial economic drivers. But in a nod to the Tea Party’s sway with House Republicans, Camp was liberated to target a host of breaks the conservative grassroots deride as “crony capitalism.”

“We have to recognize the [political] environment we’re in today, and the fiscal circumstances we’re facing, and take all that into account,” said Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee who had a hand in writing the Camp plan.

Read more this story HERE.

Dem Says GOP Would Back Abortion ‘If Their Daughter Got Pregnant by a Black Man’

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Photo Credit: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty ImagesAn Alabama Democrat with a history of making incendiary racial remarks claimed that Republicans wouldn’t oppose abortion “if their daughter got pregnant by a black man.”

Alvin Holmes, a black Democrat who represents Montgomery, was debating Rep. Mary Sue McClurkin, a Republican who had proposed a bill that would ban abortions of fetuses with a detectable heartbeat.

The Tuesday debate quickly steered towards race, with Holmes saying that Republican support for abortion was based on a double standard.

“Ninety-nine percent of all of the white people in here are going to raise their hand that they are against abortion,” said Holmes, according to the Huntsville Times. “On the other hand, 99 percent of the whites who are sitting in here now, if their daughter got pregnant by a black man, they are going to make their daughter have an abortion.”

“She’s got two other white children and then she’s going to have a little black baby going to be running around there, in the living room, in the den, with the rest of them,” Holmes continued.

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Former VP Candidate Paul Ryan: ‘I Can’t Believe We Lost to These Guys’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: APWhen Republican Mitt Romney said in one of the 2012 presidential debates that Russia was America’s greatest “geopolitical adversary,” he was right, said Rep. Paul Ryan, Romney’s running mate.

Interviewed Tuesday night by Fox News’s Martha McCallum, Ryan said, “You know, there are moments, Martha, when I just look down, shake my head, and say I can’t believe we lost to these guys. This is one of those moments. Mitt was right.

“I think the President was incredibly naive on his Russia policy. His reset has been total failure. I think this is what happens when a superpower projects weakness in its form in defense policy. Aggression fills that vacuum. And I think that’s what happening right now.”

Ryan said he thinks President Obama doesn’t support the traditional view of the United States as a superpower.

“I believe he’s taken on the whole notion of exceptionalism. I believe we are an exceptional country for lots of reasons. And I’m not sure that he’s going to be leading like he ought to be in this situation. Look, Russia’s violated the sovereignty of Ukraine. I think there are a lot of things we need to be doing to address this, LNG export, other kinds of sanctions, but I think the lack of a coherent foreign policy, the fact that the president is proposing a budget to highlight our defenses projects weakness.”

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Hillary Clinton Compares Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler (+video)

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesFormer Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday compared recent actions by Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Ukraine to those implemented by Adolf Hitler in the late 1930s.

Putin’s desire to protect minority Russians in Ukraine is reminiscent of Hitler’s actions to protect ethnic Germans outside Germany, she said.

Putin has been on a campaign to give Russian passports to anyone who has Russian connections, Clinton said.

The Russian leader has recently done so in the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, which, Clinton said, is similar to what happened in Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. Hitler resettled tens of thousands of ethnic Germans who were living in parts of Europe to Nazi Germany.

Clinton made her comments at a private event benefiting the Boys & Girls Clubs of Long Beach.

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President Obama’s Foreign Policy is Based on Fantasy

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Photo Credit: J. Scott ApplewhiteBy Editorial Board.

FOR FIVE YEARS, President Obama has led a foreign policy based more on how he thinks the world should operate than on reality. It was a world in which “the tide of war is receding” and the United States could, without much risk, radically reduce the size of its armed forces. Other leaders, in this vision, would behave rationally and in the interest of their people and the world. Invasions, brute force, great-power games and shifting alliances — these were things of the past. Secretary of State John F. Kerry displayed this mindset on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday when he said, of Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine, “It’s a 19th century act in the 21st century.”

That’s a nice thought, and we all know what he means. A country’s standing is no longer measured in throw-weight or battalions. The world is too interconnected to break into blocs. A small country that plugs into cyberspace can deliver more prosperity to its people (think Singapore or Estonia) than a giant with natural resources and standing armies.

Unfortunately, Russian President Vladimir Putin has not received the memo on 21st-century behavior. Neither has China’s president, Xi Jinping, who is engaging in gunboat diplomacy against Japan and the weaker nations of Southeast Asia. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is waging a very 20th-century war against his own people, sending helicopters to drop exploding barrels full of screws, nails and other shrapnel onto apartment buildings where families cower in basements. These men will not be deterred by the disapproval of their peers, the weight of world opinion or even disinvestment by Silicon Valley companies. They are concerned primarily with maintaining their holds on power.

Read more this story HERE.

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MSNBC’s Wagner: Obama Hasn’t Articulated Foreign Policy Because “His Heart Has Never Been In It”

By Real Clear Politics.

ALEX WAGNER: A lot has been said about the administration’s foreign policy in recent weeks and especially in recent days, and a lot of it has been critical of the president. And I am sort of the camp that, you know, I’m not sure if the president could have done anything to prevent Vladimir Putin from doing what he was going to do. But it certainly puts the White House in a position where their foreign policy seems incredibly reactive and has so for really almost — the recent past, I mean, years at this point.

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3rd-Graders Caught Smoking Pot In Sonora School Bathroom (+video)

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Photo Credit: Jeff ChiuThree third-grade students at a Sonora elementary school were busted for smoking pot in the school’s bathroom last week.

Two 8-year-olds and a 9-year-old were caught by another student, who immediately informed school administrators. Those officials then alerted local police.

The students were questioned by officers, and later released to their parents on February 27th.

Read more this story HERE.

Bitcoin Firm CEO Found Dead After ‘Suicide’

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Photo Credit: LinkedinIt appears bitcoin’s recent turmoil has claimed its first life.

Autumn Radtke, a 28-year-old American CEO of bitcoin exchange firm First Meta, was found dead in her Singapore apartment on Feb. 28.

Local media are calling it a suicide, but Singapore officials are waiting for toxicology test results.

Radtke formerly worked with Apple and other Silicon Valley tech firms on developing digital payment systems.

Radtke’s death brings the number of questionable financial sector deaths this year to eight.

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Zombie Studies Gain Ground on College Campuses

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Photo Credit: WSJKyle Bishop figured it was risky when he applied to a University of Arizona Ph.D. program in English eight years ago by proposing a dissertation on zombie movies.

He was dead wrong.

The program approved Mr. Bishop’s proposal, and he is now chairman of Southern Utah University’s English department. The 40-year-old has been invited to give zombie lectures in Hawaii, Canada and Spain.

“It’s clearly now acceptable to study zombies seriously,” he says.

Just as zombies—those mythical revived corpses hungry for living human flesh and gray matter—have infiltrated pop culture, they have also gotten their hands on our brainiest reserves: the academy.

Read more this story HERE.

Ted Cruz Takes a Stand Against Controversial Obama Nominee on Senate Floor: ‘Mr. President…’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: Bill Clark/CQ Roll CallBy Jason Howerton.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Tuesday took a strong stance against President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, calling the nomination “insulting to law enforcement officers everywhere.”

Cruz’s opposition to Debo Adegbile’s nomination stems from the man’s time with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. During that time, Adegbile volunteered to advocate for Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of murdering Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981. As Townhall’s Katie Pavlich notes, attorneys with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund were able to get Abu-Jamal’s death sentence overturned.

“Mr. President, this is insulting to law enforcement officers everywhere. I stand with the Fraternal Order of Police in opposition to Debo Adegbile,” Cruz said from the Senate floor Tuesday.

Read more this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Breitbart Ted Cruz slams Obama for nominating cop killer’s advocate to DOJ Leadership

By Kristin Tate.

President Obama recently nominated Debo Adegbile to be head of the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice. Texas Senator Ted Cruz today spoke out against the nomination and criticized Adegbile, who previously held a leadership position at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF). During his time with the black activist group, Adegbile volunteered to defend Mumia Abu-Jamal, the criminal who murdered Philadelphia cop Daniel Faulkner in 1981. Thanks to Adegbile and his colleagues, Abu-Jamal ultimately avoided the death penalty.

Despite heavy scrutiny, LDF attorneys said it was a great “honor” to represent the convicted cop killer.
On the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon, Cruz said, “Mr. President, this is insulting to law enforcement officers everywhere. I stand with the Fraternal Order of Police in opposition to Debo Adegbile.”

He stressed the fact that Adegbile took pride in defending Abu-Jamal simply because of his skin color. The LDF’s defense had nothing to do with proving innocence or guilt, Cruz argued.

Read more this story HERE.

‘Delusional’: Krauthammer Slams Obama Admin’s Belief that Putin has ‘Blinked’ on Ukraine

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Photo Credit: Screenshot By Brendan Bordelon.

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer dismissed as “delusional” the Obama administration’s belief that Vladimir Putin has halted his advance in Ukraine, claiming the Russian president is “lying through his teeth.”

Krauthammer spoke with Fox News’ Bret Baier to discuss the Russian invasion of Crimean region in southern Ukraine. Many assumed Putin would follow up this action with a full-scale invasion of eastern Ukraine. But in a rambling press conference Tuesday, the Russian president indicated there may be no reason to further escalate the situation.

President Obama seized on the comments, saying he hopes Putin may at least take a “pause.” But not everybody is buying it.

Read more this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Dmitry Lovetsky/AP PhotoJohn McCain’s Advice to Obama on Russia: Wake Up! Get Real!

By Arlette Saenz.

Sen. John McCain blasted President Obama today for his handling of Russia, saying the crisis in Ukraine should serve as a wake-up call for the president about the Russian president’s intentions.

“It’s time we woke up about Vladimir Putin. It’s time this administration got real,” McCain, R-Ariz., said on the Senate floor. “We are on the verge of possibly of seeing a move to re-assert the old Russian empire, which is Mr. Putin’s lifelong ambition.”

Read more this story HERE.

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Russia test-fires ICBM amid tension over Ukraine

By Reuters.

Russia said it had successfully test-fired an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) on Tuesday, with tensions running high over its military intervention in Ukraine’s Crimea region.

A U.S. official said the United States had received proper notification from Russia ahead of the test and that the initial notification pre-dated the crisis in Crimea. The Russian Defence Ministry could not be reached for comment.

The Strategic Rocket Forces launched an RS-12M Topol missile from the southerly Astrakhan region and the dummy warhead hit its target at a proving ground in Kazakhstan, Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Yegorov told state-run news agency RIA.

The launch site, Kapustin Yar, is near the Volga River about 450 km (280 miles) east of the Ukrainian border. Kazakhstan, a Russian ally in a post-Soviet security grouping, is further to the east.

Russia conducts test launches of its ICBMs fairly frequently and often announces the results, a practice seen as intended to remind the West of Moscow’s nuclear might and reassure Russians that President Vladimir Putin will protect them.

Read more this story HERE.