Obama Calls, Congratulates NBA Star For Admitting He is Homosexual

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Photo Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesPresident Obama called the NBA center Monday evening to express his support and said he was impressed by his courage.

President Obama telephoned professional basketball player Jason Collins on Monday to congratulate him for coming out as the first openly gay player on a major U.S. sports team.

According to a White House aide, the president called Collins Monday evening to express his support and said he was impressed by his courage.

Collins, 34, is a veteran NBA center who played for the Boston Celtics and Washington Wizards during the 2012-13 season. He is currently a free agent. In a piece for this week’s Sports Illustrated, he admitted to being gay. He cited Rep. Joseph Kennedy (D-Mass.) as inspiring his decision to go public.

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Mormon Church Approves Boy Scout's New Homosexual Policy

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Photo Credit: APBoy Scouts of America leaders recently received a boost for their proposed policy on gays from a powerful stakeholder — the Mormon church.

“We are satisfied that BSA has made a thoughtful, good-faith effort to address issues that, as they have said, remain ‘among the most complex and challenging issues facing the BSA and society today,’ ” the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) said in a statement.

This means the church is satisfied with “both the process and the proposal,” LDS spokesman Eric Hawkins said Friday, referring to the BSA’s proposed policy to permit openly gay youth — but not openly gay adults — to be members.

The Mormon support bolsters the chances that the BSA’s national council will adopt its proposed policy when it meets May 22-24 in Texas, since the LDS Church sponsors some 500,000 youth members and nearly 40,000 packs, troops and crews.

Under current BSA membership standards, the 103-year-old organization does not ask anyone about sexual orientation, but disallows people to be part of Scouting if they are open or avowed homosexuals.

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Robertsons of 'Duck Dynasty' Hit the Road for Faith (+video)

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Photo Credit: The TennesseanIt took only days for famed Florida Gators quarterback Tim Tebow to sell out a Nashville lecture at Lipscomb University in 2010.

“Duck Dynasty’s” Robertson family did the same thing this year. Only they did it three times over.

They’re so popular, Lipscomb has to have one of their appearances for the Don Meyer Evening of Excellence in the afternoon.

Friday night marked at least the third time since December a member of the popular A&E reality-show clan took a Nashville stage to spread hunting tips and their brand of “happy, happy, happy” Christianity, to steal a phrase family patriarch Phil Robertson made popular. He’ll speak again this afternoon and tonight with wife Kay and brother Si.

Their third-season finale Wednesday set an A&E series record with nearly 10 million viewers. More in the Nashville market watched “Duck Dynasty” than any other show that day, said Mark Binda, program and research director for WTVF-Channel 5.

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Obama Hammers New State Abortion Laws

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President Obama slammed state abortion restrictions Friday in a speech to Planned Parenthood’s national conference.

Obama criticized efforts at the state and federal levels to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood and roll back access to abortion.

When abortion-rights supporters see some of the proposed restrictions, “you want to check the calendar, you want to make sure it’s still 2013,” Obama said.

Obama criticized Republican governors’ attempts to limit abortion access — a trend that has gathered steam over the past few years as conservatives shift from requirements like parental notification to laws that set increasingly early limits on when a woman can receive an abortion.

“There’s nothing conservative about the government injecting itself into decisions best made between a woman and her doctors,” Obama said.

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Tenn. Woman Gets 51 Years in Newborn Twins Deaths

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Photo Credit: EtanSivad[The 26-year old mother, Lindsey Lowe,] gave birth to the twin boys in the bathroom of her parents’ home in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Hendersonville, about 20 miles northeast of Nashville on the night of Sept. 12, 2011. She told police she smothered them and placed them in a laundry basket so that her parents would not hear their cries. Lowe’s parents found one of the babies two days later and alerted police…

In ordering the maximum sentence on the child abuse charges, [Judge Dee David] Gay said he found Lowe to be untruthful and selfish and called it a tragedy that so many people believe her version of events.

Gay said Lowe’s statement in a letter to the judge claiming she did not know she was pregnant was “not credible,” and he chided her for writing that the babies’ father had date-raped her.

“Just how in the world is that relevant?” he asked. “And is it supposed to devalue the lives of these children?…There are real serious problems in you taking responsibility for what you did.”

Gay quoted Focus on the Family founder James Dobson saying, “Our children are the true wealth of any nation” and added that we cannot become “a child-killing society that views children as burdens rather than blessings.”

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911 Calls: California Planned Parenthood Injures Three Women in Abortions (+audio)

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Photo Credit: YouTubeOperation Rescue has obtained recordings and Computer Aided Dispatch Transcripts for four 911 calls placed from a single Planned Parenthood in Orange, California, three of which were made on the same day seeking emergency transport for patients suffering complications from an abortion and one employee experiencing from chest pain.

The records raise additional questions concerning patient safety of Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics across the nation. Operation Rescue has documented 22 medical emergencies occurring at abortion clinics nationwide since January 1, 2013. This includes five medical emergencies at a Planned Parenthood in Wilmington, Delaware, which later fired its abortionist and closed down for “cleaning” after public outcry erupted.

“There simply is no such thing as a ‘safe and legal’ abortion clinic,” said Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue and Pro-Life Nation. “Women are injured or killed, and babies die as a matter of course in our nation’s abortion clinics and we have yet to find one that obeys the law on all points. Health and safety violations are rampant at abortion clinics, and Planned Parenthood is certainly no exception.”

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Gosnell Fallout: Another Ohio Abortion Clinic Forced to Close its Doors

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Photo Credit: bradbrundageThe state is shutting down an abortion provider in Cuyahoga Falls.

The Ohio Department of Health recently issued an order to Capital Care Network, 2127 State Road, saying it was revoking the clinic’s Health Care Facility license to operate an outpatient surgical facility. The clinic is prohibited from “performing medical services, including surgical procedures, pharmaceutical services and anesthesia services,” according to an April 16 adjudication order.

The state health department did an annual inspection at Capital Care on Feb. 14 and found numerous Ohio Administrative Code violations. The department issued a notice that it planned to revoke the clinic’s license.

The clinic didn’t request a hearing.

Tess Pollock, a spokeswoman for the state agency, said the clinic “had a long list of violations, so we needed to move forward.”

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Fox News Special: “See No Evil – The Kermit Gosnell Murders” Airs May 5

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Photo Credit: Life NewsFox News will air a one-hour special on abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell and his murder charges Sunday May 5 at 9 p.m. ET. The cable news channel has now unveiled the name of the program, which will be called “See No Evil – The Kermit Gosnell Murders.”

Father Frank Pavone, the director of Priests for Life, announced the special to LifeNews in an email this morning and encouraged pro-life advocates to tune in and to let others know about it.

“Please spread the word starting now,” he said. “Let’s do all we can to spread the word about this so as to get as many people as possible to watch, and to show our friends in the secular media that when this topic is addressed, people tune in.”

Father Pavone says it is up to the pro-life movement to expose Gosnell to the nation, with the mainstream media largely punting coverage of his trial.

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Child Hunger Is Exploding In Greece – And 14 Signs That It Is Starting To Happen In America, Too

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Photo Credit: Mens News Daily The world is heading into a horrific economic nightmare, and an inordinate amount of the suffering is going to fall on innocent children. If you want to get an idea of what America is going to look like in the not too distant future, just check out what is happening in Greece.

At this point, Greece is experiencing a full-blown economic depression. As I have written about previously, the unemployment rate in Greece has now risen to 27 percent, which is much higher than the peak unemployment rate that the U.S. economy experienced during the Great Depression of the 1930s. And as you will read about below, child hunger is absolutely exploding in Greece right now. Some families are literally trying to survive on pasta and ketchup.

But don’t think for a moment that it can’t happen here. Sadly, the truth is that child hunger is already rising very rapidly in our poverty-stricken cities. Never before have we had so many Americans unable to take care of themselves. Food stamp enrollment and child homelessness have soared to brand new all-time records, and there are actually thousands of Americans that are so poor that they live in tunnels underneath our cities.

But for millions of other Americans, the suffering is not quite so dramatic. Instead, they just watch their hopes and their dreams slowly slip away as they struggle to find a way to make it from month to month. There are millions of parents that lead lives that are filled with constant stress and anxiety as they try to figure out how to provide the basics for their children.

How do you tell a child that you can’t give them any dinner even though you have been trying as hard as you can?

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Several Murder Charges Against 'House of Horrors' Abortion Doc Tossed by Judge

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Photo Credit: APThree of eight murder charges were thrown out Tuesday against a Philadelphia abortion provider whose clinic was called a “house of horrors,” apparently because the judge had not heard sufficient evidence from prosecutors that the three babies were viable, born alive and then killed.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 72, still faces the death penalty if convicted of first-degree murder in four remaining infant deaths. Prosecutors have argued that the babies were viable and that Gosnell and his staff cut the back of their necks to kill them. The judge also upheld murder charges in a patient’s overdose death.

Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey Minehart did not explain why he granted some of the defense motion to acquit Gosnell after more than a month of prosecution testimony. Such motions are routine but rarely granted.

The defense questioned testimony from staffers who said they had seen babies move, cry or breathe. McMahon argued that each testified to seeing only a single movement or breath.

“These are not the movements of a live child,” McMahon said. “There is not one piece — not one — of objective, scientific evidence that anyone was born alive.”

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