Condi Rice Campaigns for McConnell, Sullivan and Other GOP Establishment Candidates

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Weekly Standard

Weekly Standard

House majority whip Kevin McCarthy introduced [Former Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice [at the National Republican Congressional Committee’s annual dinner Wednesday night in Washington, D.C.] and raised the prospect that she might become even more involved in politics in two years. After listing various prestigious positions she’s held, he noted, “There’s one thing that’s not on her resume and I want her to put her mind to it to resolve that in 2016.”

Rice has downplayed those suggestions and there’s little reason to believe she’s angling for a run. Still, she has been increasingly active on behalf of her fellow Republicans. Earlier this month, Rice spoke at a Kentucky fundraiser for Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and the spring convention for the California Republican party. Rice appeared in an ad touting Alaska Senate hopeful and Marine reservist Dan Sullivan, a spot paid for by Karl Rove’s super PAC, American Crossroads. In the coming months, she will make appearances for the National Republican Senatorial Committee….

Before turning to foreign policy, Rice urged the crowd, including many Republican House members, to keep America a “nation of immigrants” and strafed liberals who send their kids to private schools but write New York Times op-eds claiming that school choice will ruin public schools.

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John Cornyn Rips Chuck Schumer’s Media ‘Shield Law’

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Photo Credit: Reutets

Photo Credit: Reutets

The number two Republican in the Senate is lambasting a media “shield law” proposed by New York Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer, potentially imperiling its shot at passage.

“This is a bad idea and one whose time has not come,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), the Senate minority whip, told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview. “Believe me, we will not be rolled over.”

Schumer’s “Free Flow of Information Act” passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in September, and he recently said he already has the 60 votes needed to pass the bill on the floor. “We’ll get a few more Republicans, not many more, but we have the 60 votes,” Schumer told reporters in New York last week.
He’s bluffing, Cornyn retorts.

“If he had the votes to pass it, it already would have been passed,” Cornyn says, adding, “This isn’t about passing legislation, this is about distracting the public’s attention and changing the subject from the failed policies of this administration. I think you could put this in that same category.”

Schumer’s proposal would exempt a “covered journalist” from subpoenas and other legal requirements to expose their confidential sources in leak investigations and other areas. Other lawmakers have proposed similar ideas in the past, but the effort gained new momentum after a series of revelations about controversial tactics the Justice Department was using to target journalists.

Read more from this story HERE. But to find out more about Cornyn, read these stories HERE and HERE.

Common Core Shows Fourth Graders Gory, Painful Ways to Kill Class Pets

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Common Core math has gotten a lot of negative attention.

However, the Common Core standards also mandate a nonfiction-heavy reading regime that devalues literature tremendously. Specifically, under the Common Core standards, “informational texts” must constitute a huge part of what students read.

So, what exactly is in these “informational texts”?

In the idyllic expanses of New York’s Lakeland Central School District, the “informational texts” for fourth graders are disturbing agitprop from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

As EAGnews.org reports, the entire text forced on the fourth-grade kids was taken word-for-word from the PETA website PETAkids.com—home of the “30-day vegan pledge,” militant screeds against KFC and statement such as: “Zoos collect animals and put them on display to make money.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Poll: Twice as Many Feel Safer with Gun in the House than Without

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

By a margin of slightly more than two-to-one, Americans overall would feel safer with a gun in their house than not, but less than a quarter of Democrats agree, according to a new survey.

Pollster YouGov found that 42 percent would feel safer with a gun in the home. Just 20 percent would feel “less safe.”

But the findings were divided politically. Most Republicans, 59 percent, would feel safer with a gun nearby, but only 24 percent of Democrats agree.

Read more from this story HERE.

Oversight Democrats Demand End to Benghazi Probe

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Photo Credit: Getty

Photo Credit: Getty

By John Bre Snahan.

All 17 Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are demanding that Chairman Darrell Issa end his year-and-a-half-long probe into the Benghazi attacks, which left four Americans dead and have become a catchphrase signifying conservative suspicion of the Obama administration.

Led by ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the move to end what Democrats dismiss as a “partisan investigation” is part of a broader effort by party leaders on Capitol Hill to finally move past the political furor surrounding the incident.

Democrats and Obama administration officials complain that the probe has cost millions of dollars while forcing the Pentagon and other federal agencies to respond to seemingly endless congressional demands for more information, all without yielding any coverup or conspiracy. They argue that the investigation has not produced any information related to allegations that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to “stand down” military units that could have been sent to Benghazi in a bid to save U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and the other besieged Americans.

Democrats privately believe that Issa is using Benghazi to try to hurt Clinton’s possible presidential ambitions in 2016. “This is all about putting up points against Hillary,” complained a Democrat close to the issue. “It’s clear what they’re trying to do.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Townhall

Photo Credit: Townhall

Remembering HillaryCare, Benghazi and “What Difference at This Point Does it Make?”

By Donald Lambro.

The end of Barack Obama’s presidency effectively began after the 2010 congressional elections when Republicans took control of the House.

Obama and the Democrats have been tumbling into a political abyss ever since, hurtling toward major Senate losses this fall, if not a decisive Republican takeover of the Democratic-run chamber.

He has been robotically going through the motions of being the president, but he no longer steers the nation’s agenda or is seen as a catalyst for change or as a leader who gets things done — as his job approval polls sink into the low 40s and the lethargic U.S. economy shows no sign of serious improvement.

His grand plan to further push our country in a sharply leftward direction has turned into a disaster for his party. Democrats have been thrown on the defensive as a result of his unpopular healthcare law that is coming apart at the seams, driving up medical insurance costs, and most likely facing some dismantlement in the courts.

Vulnerable, frightened Democrats running for re-election talk now of “fixing” Obamacare rather than preserving it as it is presently shaped — while Obama orders one year long delay after another in its full implementation in the face of devastating losses in November.

Read more from this story HERE.

Coming Soon: DMV Facility Solely for Illegal Immigrants

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Photo Credit: Tomas / Creative Commons

Photo Credit: Tomas / Creative Commons

Lompoc is slated to house a DMV processing center for undocumented immigrant driving privilege applications later this year. The state will start issuing those cards in January 2015. A building on North H Street, which has been vacant for a very long time, will house the facility according to Mayor John Linn.

The DMV location will serve as a regional center, taking applications from a broad geographic area, including San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties.

Read more from this story HERE.

Rand Paul Builds 50-State Network, Courts Mainstream Support for Presidential Bid

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Photo Credit: Ben Margot/AP

Photo Credit: Ben Margot/AP

Sen. Rand Paul has become the first Republican to assemble a network in all 50 states as a precursor to a 2016 presidential run, the latest sign that he is looking to build a more mainstream coalition than the largely ad hoc one that backed his father’s unsuccessful campaigns.

Paul’s move, which comes nearly two years before the primaries, also signals an effort to win the confidence of skeptical members of the Republican establishment, many of whom doubt that his appeal will translate beyond the libertarian base that was attracted to Ron Paul, a former Texas congressman.

The younger Paul’s nationwide organization, which counts more than 200 people, includes new supporters who have previously funded more traditional Republicans, along with longtime libertarian activists. Paul, 51, of Kentucky, has been courting Wall Street titans and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who donated to the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and Mitt Romney, attending elite conclaves in Utah and elsewhere along with other GOP hopefuls.

For the rest of this year, his national team’s chief duties will be to take the lead in their respective states in planning fundraisers and meet-ups and helping Paul’s Washington-based advisers get a sense of where support is solid and where it’s not. This is essential in key early primary battlegrounds, such as Iowa and New Hampshire, and in areas rich in GOP donors, such as Dallas and Chicago.

“A national leadership team is an important step, and it’s a critical one for the movement going forward,” said Fritz Wenzel, Paul’s pollster. “Rand has tremendous momentum, and the formation of this team will guide him as he gets closer to a decision and [will] serve as a foundation for a campaign.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Study: ‘Small’ Nuclear War Would Destroy The World

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

With an estimated 17,000 nuclear weapons in the world, we have the power to exterminate humanity many times over.

But it wouldn’t take a full-scale nuclear war to make Earth uninhabitable, reports Live Science.

Even a relatively small regional nuclear war, like a conflict between India and Pakistan, could spark a global environmental catastrophe, says a new study.

“Most people would be surprised to know that even a very small regional nuclear war on the other side of the planet could disrupt global climate for at least a decade and wipe out the ozone layer for a decade,” said lead author Michael Mills, an atmospheric scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.

Researchers developed a computer model of the Earth’s atmosphere and ran simulations to find out what would happen if there was a nuclear war with just a fraction of the world’s arsenal.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Secret Service Has a Drinking Problem

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Photo Credit: Getty Images / Chip Somodevilla

Photo Credit: Getty Images / Chip Somodevilla

One of the many pearls of wisdom that alcoholism recovery programs impart can be applied to the guys who caused the U.S. Secret Service’s latest imbroglio. It’s not that every time an agent drinks on the road, he has a problem. It’s that, whenever there’s an incident, it’s usually because he’s been drinking.

The Secret Service has a drinking problem. It’s much worse than any other cultural deficit the elite agency has. It’s more widespread than sexism, certainly, and the other isms that have been attached to the agency since the prostitution scandal in Cartagena, Colombia. It’s something that every journalist who covers the White House kind of knows, intuitively, if they’ve ever traveled with the president. Pick your favorite White House correspondent and ask him or her whether agents on President George W. Bush’s detail created problems at the Wild West saloon in Waco. One former White House scribe told me that although reporters regularly witnessed agents drinking heavily before shifts, “we just assumed they could control themselves. After all, they were the ones who were the most responsible of all of us.”

For the most part, the agents are fine the next day. The job is stressful. But looking back at a string of incidents, many of them not well-publicized, over-consumption of alcohol is the common denominator. Sometimes, agents drinking alone make bad choices. But often, agents drinking with each other don’t have the foresight, or the ability, frankly, to tell their colleagues to stop drinking without losing face. In the Netherlands, not only was a member of the Counter-Assault Team drunk, he was falling-down drunk. He was sleeping on the floor of a hallway drunk. And several of his team members were drunk, too. And no one thought to say, at some point during the evening, “Hey guys, maybe we should call it a night. You know, the reputation of the Service and all. Let’s all go home and sleep.” No one, apparently, had the capacity to be that necessary buzzkill. The lack of internal governors on behavior is one thing. The lack of peer pressure NOT to overdrink is THE problem that the Service will try to find a way to rectify.

Read more from this story HERE.

Planned Parenthood Founder: ‘No Matter How Early…It Was Taking Life’

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Margaret Sanger, a founder of Planned Parenthood, wrote in her autobiography that an abortion at any stage is the taking of a human life.

“To each group we explained simply what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way—no matter how early it was performed it was taking life,” wrote Sanger.

Planned Parenthood, which is now the leading abortion provider in America, will this week give House Minority Nancy Pelosi, its Margaret Sanger Award. Planned Parenthood says Pelosi has earned the honor through her “leadership, excellence, and outstanding contributions to the reproductive health and rights movement over the course of her career.”

According to its website, Planned Parenthood traces its origins to 1916 when Sanger opened a birth control office in Brooklyn, N.Y. In 1922, she incorporated the American Birth Control League to address issues such as “world population growth, disarmament, and world famine,” and in 1923, Sanger opened the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau in Manhattan to provide contraceptives to women.

The American Birth Control League subsequently merged with the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau and later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942.

Read more from this story HERE.