Obamacare: Infertility Treatments, Massage Care ‘Essential’ Covered Services in Some States

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Health insurance plans being set up in Kansas under President Obama’s health care law will have to cover infertility treatments, but those in Arkansas and Colorado won’t.

Maryland plans must cover weight-loss surgery, while those in Michigan have to pay for chiropractic care. Oregon plans won’t be forced to cover either of those – officials there say that covering such procedures would make premiums too expensive for most residents.

Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia have laid out what they consider to be the minimum coverage that must be made available to those obtaining insurance through small employers or the new state-based exchanges under the federal health care law.

Those states are grappling with the edges of medical care, debating whether infertility treatments, visits to chiropractors and time with massage therapists are considered “essential” in 21st-century medicine.

The law called for states to set rules for health care plans offered by small employers and plans offered under the state health care exchanges, where those without insurance will be able to shop for plans. The rules don’t apply to companies with 50 or more employees because those plans tend to already include a large range of benefits.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama beats Romney… Michelle, that is, in Battle of the Cookie Recipes

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Barack Obama and Mitt Romney [went] head-to-head tonight in the first live presidential debate of the election season.

But the pair’s wives have already been battling it out in a quadrennial recipe contest run by Family Circle magazine. Since 1992 the publication has asked potential First Ladies to submit their ultimate cookie dough formula.

And after testing both submissions, 51.5 percent of readers opted for Michelle Obama’s white and dark chocolate chip cookie over Ann Romney’s colorful M&M and oatmeal offering.

But Family Circle magazine admitted that it was a tight contest, stating: ‘Just 287 votes separated the two women, our smallest margin ever.’

Mrs Obama credited her wining recipe to her daughters’ godmother and close family friend, Mama Kaye.

Read more from this story HERE.

Inexplicable: Obama Waives Sanctions on Countries that Use Child Soldiers

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U.S. President Barack Obama issued a new executive order last week to fight human trafficking, touting his administration’s handling of the issue.

“When a little boy is kidnapped, turned into a child soldier, forced to kill or be killed — that’s slavery,” Obama said in a speech at the Clinton Global Initiative. “It is barbaric, and it is evil, and it has no place in a civilized world. Now, as a nation, we’ve long rejected such cruelty.”

But for the third year in a row, Obama has waived almost all U.S. sanctions that would punish certain countries that use child soldiers, upsetting many in the human rights community.

Late Friday afternoon, Obama issued a presidential memorandum waiving penalties under the Child Soldiers Protection Act of 2008 for Libya, South Sudan, and Yemen, penalties that Congress put in place to prevent U.S. arms sales to countries determined by the State Department to be the worst abusers of child soldiers in their militaries. The president also partially waived sanctions against the Democratic Republic of the Congo to allow some military training and arms sales to that country.

Human rights advocates saw the waivers as harmful to the goal of using U.S. influence to urge countries that receive military assistance to move away from using child soldiers and contradictory to the rhetoric Obama used in his speech.

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: CNN’s Brooke Baldwin Battles Reparative Therapist Promoting Homosexuality Cure

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As Restoring Liberty reported yesterday, California’s governor signed into law this weekend a bill banning mental health intervention for children who have been molested and then say they’re gay, bi-Sexual, or transgendered.

A leading opponent of this new law, a reparative therapist who had gone through such therapy himself as a child after being molested, was then interviewed on CNN by a hostile Brooke Baldwin.

On Baldwin’s show, he announced a court challenge to the new law.

If you have any interest in this subject, you should watch the below exchange:

Lindsay Lohan Accuses GOP Staffer of Assaulting Her

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Lindsay Lohan has accused a Republican Party staff member of assaulting her at a five-star New York hotel last night.

[Christian] LaBella was accused of harassment after allegedly getting in a tussle with Ms Lohan at the W Hotel in Manhattan’s Union Square, when he is said to have punched her after she demanded he delete cellphone photos of her.

But he will not face any criminal charges, to the fury of the actress, who apparently regards the fact that LaBella has escaped punishment as ‘distressing and outrageous’.

The 26-year-old actress was involved in an altercation with LaBella after meeting him at a nightclub before bringing him back to her room where a group of her friends was present, according to NBC News 4.

An argument between Lohan and LaBella is believed to have stemmed over photos he took of the actress on his mobile phone while at the hotel.

Read more from this story HERE.

Welcome to the Arab Spring: Tunisian Woman Raped by Police Faces Jail for Indecent Exposure

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Tunisia’s minister for women has condemned the alleged rape by police of a woman who was later – together with her fiance – charged with indecency.

“Nobody is above the law,” the minister, Sihem Badi, told reporters.

A lawyer for the woman says she was charged with public indecency after being raped by two officers.

The Tunisian interior ministry says that before the alleged rape took place, the woman and her fiance were found in an “immoral position”.

The woman’s lawyer, Bouchra Belhaj Hmida, told AFP news agency that the governing Islamist Ennahda party bore a “political and moral responsibility”.

California Bans Mental Health Intervention for Children Who Say They’re Gay, Bi-Sexual, Transgendered, etc.

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Photo credit: Guillaume Paumier

On Saturday, California became the first state in the nation to sign into law a prohibition on mental health intervention to address a child’s homosexual or bisexual proclivities. It also prohibits therapy to address “transgendered” children. It applies to all children under 18 years of age.

In a statement issued upon the signing of the new legislation, Governor Jerry Brown stated that “These practices have no basis in science or medicine, and they will now be relegated to the dustbin of quackery.”

Specifically, the law bans “any practices by mental health providers that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation. This includes efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.” If a practitioner violates the law, he or she will face adverse licensing action by the “licensing entity for that mental health provider.” In other words, the offending mental health professional will likely lose his or her license.

A number of groups opposed the new law including California’s Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays. Calling the bill unconstitutional, the group told legislators that, “As parents of gays and ex-gays, we are ashamed of your willingness to take action against parents, children, and the family in order to support gay activists…California is not a socialist state and our children do not belong to the government, subject to the ideology of the state over the objections of their parents.”

One conservative California group has pointed out that this “is what you get with Democrats in charge” and suggests the legislature should consider Isaiah 5:20: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness.”

Christians ‘flee Egypt town after death threats’

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Several Christian families have fled their homes in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula after receiving death threats from suspected Islamist militants, officials and residents told AFP on Friday.

Last week, flyers began circulating in the town of Rafah on the Gaza Strip border demanding that its tiny Coptic population move out, residents said.

Officials at the local church informed the authorities of the threats, but no actin was taken, they added.

Days later, a shop belonging to one of the families was fired on with automatic rifles, witnesses said.

The events prompted the families to leave Rafah but there were conflicting accounts over whether they had done so voluntarily or been evicted.

Read more from this story HERE.

Delaware: 1st State in US to Jail Parents Who Spank

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Delaware has become the first state in the US to effectively outlaw corporal discipline of children by their parents. Gov. Jack Markell signed Senate Bill 234 into law on September 12.

The legislation, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Patricia M. Blevins, redefines the term “physical injury” in the child abuse and neglect laws to broadly include any act that causes “pain.”

“This bill establishes the offense of Child Abuse,” the legislation states. “These new statutes combine current statutes and redefine physical injury and serious physical injury to reflect the medical realities of pain and impairment suffered by children.”

Under the new law, a parent causing “physical injury” (e.g., pain) to a child under age 18 would be guilty of a class A misdemeanor and subject to one year in prison. A parent causing pain to a child who was three years of age or younger would be guilty of a class G felony and subject to two years in prison.

The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), along with the Delaware Home Education Association and the Delaware Family Policy Council, opposed the legislation, saying the bill was “a violation of the right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children, including the long-recognized right to administer reasonable corporal discipline.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: “That’s Bull Sh*t, That’s Bull Sh*t!” Whoopi Blows Up At Ann Coulter Over Race Comments

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Photo credit: Daniel Kruczynski

By the Daily Mail Reporter. This is the moment Ann Coulter wound Whoopi Goldberg up to breaking point as she appeared on The View on Thursday to promote her controversial new book.

Coulter took less than 30 seconds to get under the host’s skin, confidently claiming: ‘I write these books because I try to correct things people believe that are just false.’

Armed with copies of Mugged, she argued that America’s ‘legacy of slavery’ has lead to civil rights only ‘belonging to blacks’, much to Goldberg’s disgust.

As tension mounted around the table, Goldberg demanded of Coulter: ‘Tell me what you know about being black.’

Appearing exasperated to the point of near-speechlessness, Goldberg told her: ‘Your facts are a little shaky. I mean, you’re saying that because liberals have abandoned black people now—what? I don’t get it. I don’t understand.’

‘I don’t think liberals ever cared about black people,’ Coulter said, defending herself and trying to make a case for sympathetic republicans. Read more from this story HERE.

Here’s the video of the exchange here (you can skip forward to the “BS” comments at about 3:55):