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Posters went up Monday night all over Hollywood around Rhimes’s Hancock Park home and the Sunset Gower Studios where Scandal is filmed.
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Barack Obama has refused to include a religious exemption in an executive order that he plans to sign today, which mandates that federal contractors hire homosexual and transgender persons.
According to White House representatives, Obama will sign the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) on Monday without any provisions for religious entities. The order prohibits federal contractors from refusing to hire prospects on the basis of their gender identity or “sexual orientation.”
“Following on his pledge for this to be a year of action to expand opportunity for all Americans, the president has directed his staff to prepare for his signature an executive order that prohibits federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity,” an unnamed White House official told Time last week.
“The action would build upon existing protections, which generally prohibit federal contractors and subcontractors from discriminating in employment decisions on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. This is consistent with the president’s views that all Americans, LGBT or not, should be treated with dignity and respect,” they stated.
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Texas Rep. Joaquín Castro on Monday said Gov. Rick Perry is “militarizing our border” with his decision to deploy state National Guard troops there.
“We should be sending the Red Cross to the border not the National Guard to deal with this humanitarian crisis,” the Democratic congressman said in an email. “The children fleeing violence in Central America are seeking out Border Patrol agents. They are not trying to evade them. Why send soldiers to confront these kids?”
“Militarizing our border is the wrong response to the arrival of children,” Castro continued. “I remain hopeful that our state can provide a more helpful response than to send armed soldiers to greet children seeking refuge from violence.”
Castro was responding to a report from a Texas newspaper The Monitor that Perry is planning to deploy up to 1,000 Texas National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.
At a news conference on Monday in Austin, Perry announced that he has directed the state’s adjutant general to immediately prepare to deploy the forces to help secure the southern border. “I will not stand idly by,” he said in announcing Operation Strong Safety. “The price of inaction is too high.”
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Gov. Rick Perry deploying up to 1,000 National Guard troops to border
By Rebecca Kaplan.
Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas, announced Monday that he is activating up to 1,000 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border as he accuses the federal government of offering “lip service” on border security.
The announcement comes as the Obama administration is still struggling to deal with the influx of more than 50,000 unaccompanied minors, most from Central America, who have crossed into the United States in the past year. The additional resources are not aimed at the children themselves, Perry said, describing them instead as a “force multiplier” to help the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) “combat the brutal Mexican drug cartels that are preying upon our communities.”
“I will not stand idly by while our citizens are under assault and little children from Central America are detained in squalor. We are too good of a country,” Perry said.
The troops could detain people if asked, Texas Adjutant General John Nichols said at the press conference with Perry, but they are planning to play a “referring and deterring” role by deterring cartels with their visible presence and referring any immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally to DPS.
Perry argued that the elevated response at the border by DPS personnel has already has already acted as a deterrent force and reduced apprehensions. That operation comes at a cost of $1.3 million per week. A state memo obtained by the McAllen Monitor, which first reported Perry’s plan to deploy the National Guard, indicated the new efforts will cost the state of Texas $12 million per month.
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Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite / AP
The Internal Revenue Service solicitation for “media destruction” services reflects an otherwise routine job to protect sensitive taxpayer information, but it was made while the agency’s record destruction practices remain under a sharp congressional spotlight.
Congressional investigators of the IRS targeting of conservative groups have been hampered by the unexplained destruction of emails and other records of Ms. Lerner, the former head of the IRS tax-exempt division and a central figure in the scandal.
The loss of Ms. Lerner’s hard drive also raised broader questions about why the tax agency never reported the missing records to the National Archives and Records Administration, as required by the Federal Records Act.
While those questions remained unresolved, IRS officials signaled plans to destroy tens of thousands of additional electronic records.
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By Rasmussen Reports.
On a list of some of the world’s best-known conspiracy theories, Americans are most likely to believe the one about JFK‘s assassination. But President George W. Bush and President Obama don’t escape suspicion.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 45% of American Adults reject as false the theory that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by more than one shooter. Thirty-two percent (32%) believe more than one shooter was involved in the 1963 assassination in Dallas, and another 23% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Last November, on the 50th anniversary of the assassination, 36% of adults said Kennedy was the victim of a lone gunman, but just as many (37%) said he was the victim of a larger conspiracy.
One-in-four adults (24%) are convinced that the U.S. government knew in advance about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and did nothing to stop them, and 19% more are not sure. Only 57% say that conspiracy theory is false.
Just as many (23%) say the theory that Obama is not an American citizen is true, with another 17% who aren’t sure. Sixty percent (60%) reject that theory as false.
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Battleground Poll: Obama Disapproval Climbs to 57 Percent
By Guy Benson.
…Fewer than one in five favor leaving Democrats’ signature healthcare experiment intact. For all of their “fix, don’t nix” rhetoric, Congressional Democrats’ 2015 budget proposed zero changes to Obamacare, as liberal Senators and pundits alike continue to blindly extol its implementation:
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Between the falsification of waiting lists, the retaliation against whistle blowers, and VA Secretary Eric Shinseki’s resignation, all eyes have been on the VA the past few months. Should it come as a surprise, then, that numerous commissions, GAO investigations, hearings, and IG reports previously spoke to the inefficiencies of the VA? Nothing was done about this deep, institutional problem until it was too late.
Peter Schuck, Professor Emeritus of Law at Yale Law School, has written a book titled “Why Government Fails So Often: And How It Can Do Better” which chronicles the deep structural flaws that undermine the vast majority of federal agencies. Though the VA is a perfect case study for what he describes in his book, Schuck analyzes a large number of domestic programs and develops criteria for assessing their effectiveness.
At last week’s “Fixing the US Department of Veterans Affairs” panel at the American Enterprise Institute, Schuck outlined several features that contribute to the defective nature of large government service programs:
1. Ever-increasing budgets: In the case of the VA, the budget has doubled in real terms over the past 10 years. Big government agency budget hikes are often driven by demographics and interest group politics.
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Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, filed the lawsuit in January after the Office of Personnel Management decided months earlier that lawmakers and their staffs should continue to receive health care benefits covering about 75 percent of their premium costs after leaving the health insurance program for federal workers.
Johnson said the decision would make him decide which staff members qualified for subsidized insurance, potentially creating conflict in his office. He also said it forced him to participate in a program that he believed was illegal and that it could make voters view him negatively because his staff received benefits the general public did not.
But U.S. District Judge William Griesbach said Johnson and a staff member who filed the lawsuit with him didn’t have grounds to bring the suit.
Johnson’s belief that subsidies provided to lawmakers and their staffs are illegal isn’t a strong enough reason to disqualify him from the rule put in place under the Affordable Care Act, Griesbach said. The judge also said Johnson failed to show voters would view him negatively if his staff received subsidized insurance.
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Actuaries predict your life span. Banks track your spending habits. Now, your employer can tell whether you’ll have diabetes a year from now.
And the federal government is encouraging businesses to use that information to tell you how to eat and exercise, to “data mine” for your own good and the employer’s bottom line.
Medical records, social media, credit card records and new activity tracking gadgets like Fitbits are being used to assess your riskiness to yourself and to the cost-conscious health care system.
Aetna is among the companies paving the way. It’s using data analytics and interventions on its own 50,000 employees — and about 40 of the companies it insures are using them, too.
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To play off “Equal Pay Day” on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has scheduled a show vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act, which shifts the burden to employers to prove pay discrepancies are not related to gender. Democratic Conference Vice Chairman Chuck Schumer tweeted Monday: “Without action to address the gender pay gap, women won’t reach pay equity until 2058.”
But Mr. Schumer, Mr. Reid and the others in the Senate Democratic leadership — Majority Whip Dick Durbin and Conference Secretary Patty Murray — are hypocritical in saying they want women to have equal seniority and pay.
Not one of them has a female chief of staff or communications director, the person spearheading this week’s publicity stunts. Mr. Reid’s spokesman, Adam Jentleson, did not respond to a request for comment.
Ms. Murray is the only woman on either side in leadership, but she’s also in the lowest-ranking position. The Washington Democrat tweeted Monday: “50+ yrs since JFK signed #EqualPay Act women still earn just 77¢ to every $1 men make.” Yet her top adviser and the communicator for this message are men.
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Clinton’s income since her resignation as secretary of state in February 2013 is derived mostly from her latest memoir, speeches and paid appearances at corporate retreats, according to an analysis of data compiled by Bloomberg.
At least 12 organizations that previously booked President Bill Clinton — who has been paid almost $106 million in speaking fees alone since he left the White House — also hired his wife. Among them: Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and the National Association of Realtors.
With a prospective 2016 presidential candidacy in her future, she keeps tight control over her events. In one university contract, Clinton retained the right to approve her introducer, program, moderator and the set, and she limited to 50 the number of pictures taken on a rope line.
Her earnings represent a fraction of the Clinton family’s total income and yet were large enough to rank her not only in the top 1 percent of the nation’s earners but in the top one-hundredth of the 1 percent.
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