Unholy Alliance: Obama Administration Partnering with Churches to Post Bulletins to Promote Obamacare

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By Jeryl Bier. In an effort to sign up as many consumers as possible for insurance under the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare), the Obama administration has gone to extraordinary lengths to partner with churches and other faith-based groups, even publishing sample church bulletin inserts, flyers, and scripts for announcements, as well as “talking points.” These materials are part of the “Second Sunday & Faith Weekend of Action Toolkit,” which is available on the website of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

From the beginning, HHS has sought to develop partnerships with faith-based organizations to promote the Obamacare. This “toolkit” has been available since 2013. However, the details of these partnerships have largely escaped the attention of the national media. The Second Sunday & Faith Weekend of Action program encourages churches to use the second Sunday of each month during open enrollment to hold informational meetings and sign-up events.

The materials also include two full pages of “talking points,” which end with an admonition to churches that “[y]ou are trusted messengers in this community. We hope you share this information with those around you so they can be connected with the care they need.”

Non-profits such as Community Health Connectors have also brought togeather churches and faith-based organizations with government officials for information regarding the ACA, recently even hosting an “off the record” conference call with First Lady Michelle Obama “to discuss how the Affordable Care Act is impacting the lives of your congregation members.” (Read more about the attempt to promote Obamacare HERE)

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Flurry of Sign-Ups at Health Law Deadline

By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar. After a computer glitch got patched up, supporters of President Barack Obama’s health care law were out in force Sunday trying to get uninsured people signed up by the official deadline for 2015 coverage.

The effort had the trappings of a get-out-the-vote drive, with email reminders, telephone calls and squads of community-level volunteers.

“You can’t avoid it: TV, radio, church, wife, kids, co-workers,” said Ramiro Hernandez, a previously uninsured truck repair shop owner who enrolled himself and his family in Joliet, Illinois, on Saturday.

Technicians anxiously monitored the federal HealthCare.gov website for any new bugs. The administration provided no statistics on weekend sign-ups, instead releasing numbers that showed tens of thousands of consumers were trying to connect, online and by phone. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Obama Vows to ‘Squeeze Every Last Bit of Change’ From His Last Two Years in Office

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By Ben Wolfgang. President Obama on Friday night returned to his core 2008 themes of hope and change, telling Democratic party loyalists that he intends to challenge “cynical politics” during his final two years office.

Speaking at a party fundraiser in San Francisco, the president blamed Democrats’ poor showing in the November midterm elections on voter apathy driven by frustration and anger with government. He said low turnout largely is to blame for the GOP gaining seats in the House and capturing control of the Senate.

But Mr. Obama said he still has two years in office and intends to use that time to strengthen Americans’ faith in Washington. (Read more about what Obama vows to do HERE)

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Obama Taking Complete Control of the Internet

By Pam Key. Friday on Newsmax TV’s “The Steve Malzberg Show,” FCC commissioner Ajit Pai said President Barack Obama is about to succeed in his attempt to take “alarmingly unprecedented direct involvement” into the FCC’s plan to regulate the internet, which he explained will mean “billions of dollars in new taxes,” slower broadband speeds and “less competition.”

Discussing the plan that the FCC has refused to let the public see Pai said, “Unfortunately it looks like the cake has been baked. President Obama gave his direction to the FCC in back in early November and lo and behold, the FCC majority has put together President Obama’s plan for Internet regulation. And it looks to be posed pass it on a 3-to-2 vote.” (Read more from this story HERE)

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Will Bill Clinton’s Perverted Baggage Ruin Hillary’s Presidential Run Hopes?

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By Maureen Callahan. She hasn’t even announced, but the question has already resurfaced: Will Bill Clinton’s baggage derail Hillary Clinton’s presidential hopes?

Just a few weeks ago, reports broke that Bill Clinton had flown at least 11 times on “The Lolita Express” — a private plane owned by the mysterious financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. According to Virginia Roberts, who claims to have been one of Epstein’s many teenaged sex slaves, Clinton also visited Epstein’s private Caribbean retreat, known as “Orgy Island.”

“I remember asking Jeffrey, ‘What’s Bill Clinton doing here?’ ” Roberts said in 2011. The former president, she added, was accompanied by four young girls during his stay — two of whom were among Epstein’s regular sex partners. “And [Jeffrey] laughed it off and said, ‘Well, he owes me a favor.’ He never told me what favors they were.”

Clinton also spent years traveling and partying with Ron Burkle, a billionaire bachelor with a penchant for very young girls. Clinton spent so much time on Burkle’s private plane that it came to be known in Burkle’s circle as “Air F—k One.”

And that is to say nothing of Bill’s solicitation of mystery donors, the concerns about financial malfeasance at the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, Bill’s racially charged verbal gaffes during Hillary’s 2008 bid and the alleged longtime, serious mistress that diverted Hillary’s presidential campaign from larger problems. (Read more about Bill’s baggage affecting Hillary’s presidential run hopes HERE)

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Obama Bundlers Slow to Back Hillary Clinton Super PACS

By Fredreka Schouten and Christopher Schnaars. Only a tiny fraction of the fundraisers who helped President Obama secure a second term have made significant contributions to the committee backing a potential run by Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

Of the 769 individuals and couples who raised money for Obama, just 54 people and firms have donated at least $5,000 to Ready for Hillary, the super PAC that has spent two years working to build grass-roots support for a Clinton campaign, according to the analysis.

South Carolina lawyer Richard Harpootlian collected more than $500,000 for Obama’s re-election, according to figures released by the president’s campaign. However, Harpootlian, a former two-time chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, is sitting on the sidelines in the early stages of the 2016 campaign. “I don’t know that she has generated any sort of enthusiasm or excitement,” he said of Clinton.

“In 2007, the Clinton campaign was more a corporate entity with layers and layers and layers of consultants — Clinton, Inc. — as opposed to a campaign,” Harpootlian said, referring to the early months of Clinton’s unsuccessful primary battle with Obama.

“I had hoped that this time around the Clinton campaign would be more agile. But there’s no real feeling that there’s a campaign. They are acting as if she’s the nominee, which is what happened in 2007 — and good golly — that went wrong.” (Read more from this story HERE)

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Chris Kyle’s Killer’s Home was Full of Pot and Drugs to Treat Schizophrenia

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By Washington Times. Authorities searching the home of the man suspected of killing “American Sniper” author Chris Kyle found marijuana, a nearly empty bottle of whiskey and a drug commonly used to treat schizophrenia.

A Texas Ranger testified Friday at Eddie Ray Routh’s murder trial that authorities found the items in the hours after the bodies of Kyle and his friend Chad Littlefield were found at a rural shooting range.

Routh’s attorneys have been pursuing an insanity defense, saying the ex-Marine was suffering from mental illness. The prosecution says Routh was numbed by marijuana and whiskey at the time of the shootings and should be held accountable. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Strong Cannabis Use Causes One in Four Cases of Psychosis

By Daily Mail Reporter. As many as a quarter of new cases of psychotic mental illness can be blamed on super-strength strains of cannabis, scientists will warn this week.

The potent form of the drug – known as ‘skunk’ – is so powerful that users are three times more likely to have a psychotic episode than those who have never tried it.

The study, leaked to The Mail on Sunday, will reignite debate around Britain’s drug laws – and will add weight to calls for a tougher stance towards those caught dealing or in possession of cannabis.

According to Crime Survey figures for England and Wales, more than a million youngsters aged 16 to 24 smoke cannabis. (Read more from this story HERE)

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As Obama Golfed, ISIS Slaughtered Egyptian Christians Held in Libya

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CBS News reported that this past weekend, Obama was again playing golf, this time “at Porcupine Creek in Rancho Mirage. The owner is Oracle software company co-founder [billionaire] Larry Ellison.” In other words, Obama was screwing around on the golf course again while ISIS was creating mayhem across the Middle East.

As BBC reported:

A video has emerged showing the beheadings purportedly of 21 Egyptian Christians who had been kidnapped by Islamic State (IS) militants in Libya.

The footage shows a group wearing orange overalls, being forced to the ground and then decapitated. . .

The kidnapped Egyptian workers, all Coptic Christians, were seized in December and January from the coastal town of Sirte in eastern Libya, now under the control of Islamist groups.

The video of the beheadings was posted online by Libyan jihadists who pledge loyalty to IS. A caption made it clear the men were targeted because of their faith. . .

The beheadings were described as “barbaric” by al-Azhar, the highly regarded theological institution which is based in Egypt.

(Read more from “ISIS Slaughtered Egyptian Christians” HERE)
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McCain on ISIS Fight: We Should Not Restrain the President

By Daniel Cooney. Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., said Sunday that Congress should not restrict the president’s broad authority in authorizing the use of military force against the terrorist group known as ISIS.

“If we don’t like what the commander-in-chief is doing, we can cut off his funds for doing so. But to restrain him in our authorization of him taking military action, I think frankly, is unconstitutional,” McCain said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He added that restraining the president’s authority to take military action “eventually leads to 535 commanders-in-chief,” referring to the total number of members of Congress.

McCain’s comments came after the president sent a draft of a new authorization of military force — or AUMF — to take action against ISIS. The draft stipulates a three-year authorization with no geographic limits and limited use of ground troops. The authorization would repeal the 2002 AUMF, which former Pres. George W. Bush used for the war in Iraq.

McCain, making his first appearance on “Meet the Press” since September 2013, said the president probably did not need the authority, but Congress should debate the issue. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Jail Deputy Testifies That He Heard Eddie Routh Say Why He Killed Chris Kyle

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Photo Credit: New York NewsBy New York News. Former Marine Cpl. Eddie Ray Routh enters the courtroom for his capital murder trial Friday in Stephenville, Texas. Routh, 27, of Lancaster, is charged with the 2013 deaths of former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle and his friend Chad Littlefield at a shooting range.

The deranged man charged with killing “American Sniper” Chris Kyle and another vet said he gunned them down because “they wouldn’t talk to me,” it was revealed Friday.

In dramatic testimony at Eddie Ray Routh’s double murder trial, a Texas jail deputy testified that he heard Routh say, “I shot them because they wouldn’t talk to me.”

“I feel bad about it, but they wouldn’t talk to me,” the deputy, Gene Cole, testified.

“I’m sure they’ve forgiven me.” (Read more about what the deputy heard Eddie Routh say HERE)

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Bradley Cooper: Chris Kyle Never Really Left Me

By Rebecca Keegan. “You’ve got your back to the window, so you’re kind of screwed,” Bradley Cooper said.

Cooper was scanning the room from a high-backed chair, his eyes tracking the waiter carrying his breakfast, the guy in the hoodie tapping away on a laptop near the door, the “at risk” reporter staring back at him.

Assessing the potential threats in a space — even in a Tribeca luxury hotel on a sleepy December morning with horizontal rain — was a habit Cooper had picked up while making “American Sniper.”

“After that, you’re more aware of everything,” he said of the experience of crawling inside the mind of the military’s deadliest sniper, Chris Kyle . “He didn’t really leave me.” (Read more from this story HERE)

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New Jersey Judge Bars Experts Who Believe Homosexuality is a Mental Disorder in Lawsuit Against Reparative Therapy Group

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A New Jersey judge hearing a lawsuit made against a sexual orientation change therapy group has decided to bar the testimony of experts who consider homosexuality a mental disorder.

State Superior Court Judge Peter F. Bariso Jr. ruled last week that Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH) could not bring certain experts in due to their position that homosexuality should still be considered a mental illness.

“The overwhelming weight of scientific authority concludes that homosexuality is not a disorder or abnormal. The universal acceptance of that scientific conclusion – save for outliers such as JONAH – requires that any expert opinions to the contrary must be barred,” wrote Bariso.

“No doubt, general acceptance within the scientific community is not an end in itself … Nevertheless, general acceptance constitutes strong – some might say conclusive – indicia of whether a sufficient level of reliability has been achieved.”

JONAH is being represented by the group Rancho Santa Fe, California-based legal group the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund. (Read more “Expert Barred from Court Who Believes Homosexuality is a Mental Disorder” HERE)

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Why the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM No Longer States Homosexuality is a Mental Disorder

By Laissez-faire Capitalist. In 1973, The American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed homosexuality as a mental disorder from the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-II).

This decision was a significant victory for homosexual activists and they have continued to claim that the APA based their decision on new scientific discoveries that proved that homosexual behavior is normal and should be affirmed in our culture.

This is false and part of numerous homosexual urban legends that have infiltrated every aspect of our culture. The removal of homosexuality as a mental disorder has given homosexual activists credibility in the culture, and they have demanded that their sexual behavior be affirmed in society. . .

Dr. [Charles] Socarides, writing in Sexual Politics and Scientific Logic : The Issue of Homosexuality writes: “To declare a condition a ‘non-condition,’ a group of practitioners had removed it from our list of serious psychosexual disorders. The action was all the more remarkable when one considers that it involved an out-of-hand and peremptory disregard and dismissal not only of hundreds of psychiatric and psychoanalytic research papers and reports, but also a number of other serious studies by groups of psychiatrists, psychologists, and educators over the past seventy years…”

Socarides continued: “For the next 18 years, the APA decision served as a Trojan horse, opening the gates to widespread psychological and social change in sexual customs and mores. The decision was to be used on numerous occasions for numerous purposes with the goal of normalizing homosexuality and elevating it to an esteemed status.”

“To some American psychiatrists, this action remains a chilling reminder that if scientific principles are not fought for, they can be lost–a disillusioning warning that unless we make no exceptions to science, we are subject to the snares of political factionalism and the propogation of untruths to an unsuspecting and uninformed public, to the rest of the medical profession, and to the behavioral sciences.” Dr. Socarides’ report is available from the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality: www.narth.com. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Just After a Conversation With Edward Snowden, New York Times Author Drops Dead

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By Newser Editors. David Carr, author of the New York Times’ “Media Equation” column, collapsed and died at his office last night just hours after moderating a “TimesTalks” conversation with Edward Snowden, director Laura Poitras, and journalist Glenn Greenwald on Citizenfour, a documentary about Snowden’s NSA leaks. Carr, 58, lived in Montclair, NJ, with his wife and their daughter (he has two more children), and wrote The Night of the Gun, a 2008 memoir about how he went from cocaine addict to single father raising twin daughters to, ultimately, sober media columnist. Prior to joining the Times in 2002, he helmed alternative weeklies in Minneapolis and Washington, DC, and was a contributing writer for the Atlantic and New York magazine, the AP reports.

Last year, Carr started teaching a Boston University class on how journalism can sustain itself in the digital age, an issue about which he had written extensively. “I think a lot of journalism education that is going on is broadly not preparing kids for the world that they are stepping into,” he told the Boston Globe. (Read more about New York Times author passing away HERE)

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Author David Carr Dies at 58

By Bruce Weber and Ashley Southall. David Carr, who wriggled away from the demon of drug addiction to become a journalistic celebrity, a name-brand media columnist at The New York Times and a best-selling author who reported on his own near demise and recovery, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 58.

Mr. Carr collapsed in the Times newsroom, where he was found shortly before 9 p.m. He was taken to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The cause had not been determined.

Mr. Carr also survived cancer and struggled with alcoholism, but none of that undercut his energy. He made frequent television appearances on talk shows and news programs, often spoke to journalism classes, and in 2011 was the leading figure in a documentary about The Times.

On the evening he died, he had moderated a panel discussion of “Citizenfour,” the Oscar-nominated documentary about Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked classified information indicating that the United States government was conducting global surveillance on a far larger scale than was publicly known. (Read more from this story HERE)

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UPDATE: Autopsy Suggests David Carr Died From “A Particularly Aggressive Strain of Lung Cancer”

By Thomas Tracy. New York Times columnist David Carr died of complications from a particularly aggressive strain of lung cancer, the city’s medical examiner ruled Saturday.

The renowned 58-year-old scribe, who wrote the influential Media Equation column, was suffering from small cell lung cancer when he collapsed in the newsroom shortly before 9 p.m. on Thursday.

He was rushed to Mount Sinai Roosevelt Hospital, where he died, the Times reported. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Former U.S. Army Soldier Pleads Guilty to Conspiring to Kill Federal Agent and Informant

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By BBC. A former US soldier who allegedly formed an international band of snipers as mercenaries has confessed to a murder plot in New York.

Joseph Hunter, nicknamed Rambo after the hero of the 1980s action films, pleaded guilty to conspiring to kill a federal agent and an informant.

The 49-year-old faces up to 10 years in prison.

He believed he had been working for drug traffickers who were actually working for the US anti-drugs agency.

He is accused of recruiting ex-military snipers with the aim of carrying out murders on behalf of drug organisations. (Read more about the soldier conspiring to kill the federal agent HERE)

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A Family Was Not Told Their Mother’s Death Was a Suicide Until They Saw News Report on Television

By Sheboygan Press Media. The family of a soldier from Kiel who died last year in Kosovo from a gunshot wound had not been informed by military investigators that they had concluded their daughter had committed suicide until they read about it in the Sheboygan Press on Wednesday.

Stars and Stripes newspaper reported Monday that Army Staff Sgt. Heidi Ruh died on May 9, 2014, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at Camp Bondsteel, Kosovo, citing the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command. Stars and Stripes is published by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Ruh’s parents, Catherine and Scott Ruh, who live in rural Newton, learned about it from friends and relatives who read a story that appeared in Wednesday’s Sheboygan Press and online at sheboyganpress.com.

News of the investigation’s conclusion was carried by many other media outlets.

A family relative, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Sheboygan Press Thursday that Ruh’s two sons, who were 8 and 11 when she died, saw the news that their mother had committed suicide while watching TV in Texas, where they live. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Democrat Congresswoman to Colleagues: ‘Man Up’ and Strip Military Benefits

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By Brendan McGarry. A U.S. congresswoman implored her colleagues to “man up” and accept the recommendations from a blue-ribbon panel to overhaul military benefits.

Rep. Jackie Speier, a Democrat from California and a member of the House Armed Services Committee, praised the recent work of the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission. The panel called for offering troops 401(k)-like retirement plans and military families a choice of commercial health insurance plans in lieu of Tricare, among other proposals.

“We’ve just now have got to inject a little guts into all of us to do the right thing,” she said Wednesday during a hearing of the committee’s military personnel subcommittee, which received testimony from commission members.

The hearing was the latest in what will be a series of debates on Capitol Hill over the future of military compensation. Members of the congressionally mandated panel have said their 15 recommendations were designed to give troops, military families and retirees more benefits choices while saving the Pentagon an estimated $12 billion a year in personnel costs by 2040. (Read more about the congresswoman telling colleagues to strip military benefits HERE)

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Wounded Warrior Abused by Doctor and Social Worker

By Richard Sisk. A soldier currently at the Fort Carson, Colo., Warrior Transition Unit (WTU) suffered mistreatment by a doctor and a social worker for several months last year, an Army investigation concluded.

The soldier was mistreated at the Embedded Behavioral Health clinic while he was assigned to 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment before he joined Fort Carson’s WTU.

The fact-finding investigation under Article 15-6 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice found that the two heath care providers engaged in “problematic encounters” with the soldier between February and May of 2014, the Army said.

At a roundtable session with Pentagon reporters Friday, Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho said that the doctor and the social worker “showed a lack of dignity and respect to one soldier” and had been disciplined. (Read more from this story HERE)

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