More Bad News for Democrat Mid-Term Prospects

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsBy Chris Stirewalt.

For a second straight week, Democrats find themselves explaining why it’s a good thing for fewer Americans to be employed. Last week, it was a Congressional Budget Office report that said millions would leave the U.S. workforce in order to obtain ObamaCare benefits. This week, the CBO says that the centerpiece of the Obama Democrats midterm campaign pitch, a call to increase the federal minimum wage by 40 percent, will cost as many as 1 million jobs.

Democrats aren’t much disputing the finding from the nonpartisan green-eyeshade brigade, but are instead trying to explain why less work is a good thing. Again. The argument is that while those low-wage jobs would be wiped out, the enhanced incomes of those still working will pay dividends in the years to come. It’s a similar argument as last week’s: Fewer people will work, but their being “freed” from unsatisfying employment will create new opportunities and raise overall living standards.

Read more this story HERE.

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Dems side with GOP over Medicare cuts

By Jonathan Easley.

Nineteen Democratic senators signed a letter Tuesday to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services warning of the dire consequences for seniors if cuts to Medicare Advantage go through as expected later this month.

The letter was signed by party heavyweights, including Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), as well as vulnerable Democrats facing reelection, such as Sens. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.).

Twenty-one Republicans also signed the letter. The GOP has sought to make cuts to Medicare Advantage an election-year issue.

“We write to raise serious concerns about the Medicare Advantage (MA) 2015 rate notice and the impact further cuts may have on the millions of individuals enrolled in the program,” the senators write. “We are strongly committed to preserving the high quality health plan choices and benefits that our constituents receive through the MA program. Given the impact that payment policies could have on our constituents, we ask that you prioritize beneficiaries’ experience and minimize disruption in maintaining payment levels for 2015.”

Read more this story HERE.

FCC Commissioner’s Accusation: Fed. Govt. ‘Monitors’ Could be Used to Curtail Freedom of Press

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Photo Credit: ACLJThe Obama Administration’s Federal Communication Commission (FCC) is poised to place government monitors in newsrooms across the country in an absurdly draconian attempt to intimidate and control the media.

Before you dismiss this assertion as utterly preposterous (we all know how that turned out when the Tea Party complained that it was being targeted by the IRS), this bombshell of an accusation comes from an actual FCC Commissioner.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai reveals a brand new Obama Administration program that he fears could be used in “pressuring media organizations into covering certain stories.”

As Commissioner Pai explains in the Wall Street Journal:

Last May the FCC proposed an initiative to thrust the federal government into newsrooms across the country. With its “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs,” or CIN, the agency plans to send researchers to grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run. A field test in Columbia, S.C., is scheduled to begin this spring.

Read more this story HERE.

Barack Obama Breaking a Campaign Promise Regarding Executive Orders (+video)

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Photo Credit: Associated PressBy Karen Shuey.

Barack Obama promised to reverse what he saw as “one of the biggest problems” facing America — the president using his executive power to bypass Congress.

At least that’s what he said to a large crowd in Lancaster County on the campaign trail.

But the president may be having second thoughts.

Read more this story HERE.

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All of the Major Lawless Changes to ObamaCare Under the President in One Handy Graphic

By Kyle Becker.

President Obama has used his “pen and phone” to make numerous lawless changes to the Affordable Care Act – also known as ObamaCare:

Read more this story HERE.

Ryan Anderson to Kirsten Powers: Government Should Protect Christians’ Constitutional Rights

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Photo Credit: David McNew/Getty ImagesLiberal-leaning commentator Kirsten Powers strays from a common understanding of faith in asserting that Christians who support protections for religious views on marriage “are essentially arguing for homosexual Jim Crow laws,” Heritage Foundation scholar Ryan T. Anderson writes in a National Review Online column.

Powers makes the comparison in her column in today’s USA Today, attacking a Kansas measure that proponents say would prevent government from forcing citizens to honor same-sex marriage when it’s against their religion. In a rebuttal, Anderson writes at NRO that “the government shouldn’t enshrine Powers’s theology into law.” Legislation such as the Kansas bill, he explains, actually aims to prevent the kind of coercion that occurred under the South’s old Jim Crow regime by protecting freedom of association, freedom of contract and freedom of religion.

Powers appears to dismiss the religious convictions of florists, bakers, photographers and other business owners who don’t choose to join in celebrations of same-sex unions. “Christianity doesn’t prohibit serving a gay couple getting married,” writes the Fox News Channel regular. “Christians serve unrepentant murderers through prison ministry. So why can’t they provide a service for a same-sex marriage?”

Anderson, who as Heritage’s William E. Simon Fellow has written extensively about the marriage debate, counters that Powers misses the point:

“But many of these professionals understand their professions differently – being a wedding photographer is not simply being ‘a vendor,’ but utilizing God-given talents to tell the story of a particular couple and their relationship. Likewise, many of these professionals understand their obligation to witness to the truth differently –celebrating a same-sex relationship as a marriage affirms that relationship. It is understandable why some religious believers would not want the government coercing them into doing that. The government shouldn’t enshrine Powers’s theology into law and then coerce those who have a different understanding of what their faith requires.”

This story was produced by The Foundry’s news team. Nothing here should be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of The Heritage Foundation.

This article appeared originally at Heritage.com and is re-published in full hear with the Heritage Foundation’s permission.

Barone: Liberalism’s Snobbery Towards Most Americans

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Susan WalshThe roots of American liberalism are not compassion but snobbery. That’s the thesis of Fred Siegel’s revealing new book, The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class.

The standard account from liberal historians over the years, and more recently in bestsellers by Glenn Beck, is a linear story: Government expansion starts with the Progressives of a hundred years ago, accelerates through the New Deal and the Great Society, and is followed up by the Obama stimulus and Obamacare.

Siegel says it’s more complicated than that. And he argues that literary figures contributed as much to the liberal mindset — maybe more — than public policy wonks.

The Progressives he depicts as Protestant reformers, determined to professionalize institutions and tame the immigrant and industrial masses. Progressive projects included women’s suffrage and prohibition of alcohol.

But the many pro-German Progressives were appalled when Woodrow Wilson led America into World War I and by Wilson’s brutal suppression of civil liberties.

Read more this story HERE.

Busted! Democrats in Major Voting Scam (+video)

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Photo Credit: APA new investigative video by guerrilla journalist James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas reveals Democrat activists in Texas boasting about breaking the state’s election law by mining confidential records.

O’Keefe, who helped bring down ACORN, the community “organizing” behemoth for which Barack Obama worked as a lawyer, shows Battleground Texas Field Organizer Jennifer Longoria confirming on video that the group is culling names, telephone numbers and addresses from voter registration cards to campaign for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis.

However, Project Veritas points out that copying the personal details is illegal in Texas.

In the video, Longoria explains that the goal of her group, run by a former field director for Obama for America, is to increase the number of voters in Texas to try to raise the support for Democrats.

“So every time we register somebody to vote, we keep their name, number,” she says. When a Project Veritas investigator asks, “That’s from the voter registration form?” Longoria responds, “That data collection is the key.”

Read more this story HERE.

DHS Contracted to Purchase 704 Million Rounds of Ammo Over Next 4 Years: 2,500 Rounds Per Officer

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Photo Credit: APThe Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is contracted to purchase 704,390,250 rounds of ammunition over the next four years, which is equal to a total of about 2,500 rounds per DHS agent per year, according to a January 2014 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report entitled Ammunition Purchases Have Declined Since 2009.

“If DHS were to purchase all 704 million rounds over the next four years, and if they were used by 70,000 DHS agents and officers, it would be roughly 2,500 rounds per agent per year,” David Maurer, author of the GAO report, told CNSNews.com.

“That would be higher than what we saw in past years at DHS and higher than the average annual number of rounds per agent or officer at the Department of Justice (DOJ),” he said.

“The 704,390,250 number of rounds is like a ceiling or credit limit which DHS wouldn’t have to fully execute,” said Maurer. “It’s there to use over the next four years until fiscal year 2018, if DHS needed to purchase those rounds.”

In Appendix III of the GAO report, “Department of Homeland Security Ammunition Contracts, as of October 1, 2013,” it states that “the 29 existing DHS ammunition contracts extend over the next 4 fiscal years and have a remaining contract limit of approximately 704 million rounds (for various ammunition types) if every option for purchasing ammunition were exercised into fiscal year 2018.”

Read more this story HERE.

Obama: Ukraine, Syria are Not Pieces on ‘Some Cold-War Chessboard’

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Jacquelyn MartinPresident Barack Obama denied late Wednesday that Russian-US tensions over Syria and Ukraine were playing out on “some Cold-War chessboard” even as he acknowledged deep divisions between Moscow and Washington.

Obama, speaking at a joint press conference after a North American leaders’ summit, also flatly denied that the United States had played a role in stirring up the people against their government, saying that the uprisings “arose organically from within those countries.”

“I do think it is worth noting that you have, in this situation, one country that has clearly been a client state of Russia, another whose government is currently being supported by Russia,” he said.

But “our approach in the United States is not to see these as some Cold-War chessboard in which we’re in competition with Russia,” the president continued.

“Our goal is to make sure that the people of Ukraine are able to make decisions for themselves about their future, that the people of Syria are able to make the decisions without having bombs going off and killing women and children, or chemical weapons, or towns being starved because a despot wants to cling to power,” he said.

Read more this story HERE.

Rep. Louie Gohmert Launches Conservative PAC to Defend Candidates Against Establishment Republican Attacks

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Joshua RobertsRepublican Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert is launching a new political action committee to help defend Houseconservatives from 2014 attacks from mainstream Republican PACs, Gohmert announced exclusively to The Daily Caller.

The new GOH Conservative PAC, inspired by the Senate Conservatives Fund, “defends conservative Republicans from the attacks that come from the mainstream,” Gohmert told TheDC. “That’s been a problem, we’ve seen in some races, where we’ve had leadership come and play and there was no counterbalance. So I’m going to do something about it.”

Gohmert detailed a long history of struggle and a do-nothing spirit within the Republican caucus, and the “depression” conservative House members felt when Speaker John Boehner conceded that Republicans shut down the government, a statement that must have been based on “reading the mainstream media and failing to read the record.”

“There’s a war against the tea party. There’s a war against conservatives, we’re told. If somebody declares war on me I’m not just going to lie down and take it. I’m going to fight,” Gohmert told TheDC. ”You’ve got to have money to fight opposition. The leaders in the party raise money so that [makes congressmen] feel they have to stay close to them. If we raise money on our own we can take a stand.”

Read more this story HERE.

US Warns of Airline Shoe-Bomb Threat

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Photo Credit: AFP Photo/Spencer PlattUS security officials warned Wednesday about a potential shoe-bomb threat on international flights to the United States, local media reported.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a warning to airlines based on “very recent intelligence” considered credible that assailants would try to attack passenger jets using explosives hidden in shoes, NBC television reported.

Officials told NBC that passengers may be subjected to enhanced security screenings and airlines will pay more attention to passengers’ shoes.

Some airports already require passengers to take off their shoes for security after Richard Reid tried to detonate explosives stashed in his shoes during a Paris-Miami flight just three months after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Read more this story HERE.