CIA Made Govt Doctors Torture Suspected Terrorists After 9/11

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Photo Credit: 9/11 photos/flickrA national task force’s review of post-9/11 actions by medical professionals working with U.S. military and intelligence agencies concluded doctors violated their code of ethics by torturing detainees suspected of terrorism.

The 19-member Task Force on Preserving Medical Professionalism in National Security Detention Centers found medical doctors and psychologists, heeding instruction from the Department of Defense and the CIA, waterboarded and force-fed suspects, as well as deprived them of sleep, The Guardian reports.

“The American public has a right to know that the covenant with its physicians to follow professional, ethical expectations is firm regardless of where they serve,” said Dr. Gerald Thomson, a member of the task force and a professor emeritus at Columbia University in New York City.

The report, “Ethics Abandoned: Medical Professionalism and Detainee Abuse in the War on Terror,” said government-hired healthcare workers “designed and participated in cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment and torture of detainees” after the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. The report further states military and intelligence officials told the workers the “first do no harm” clause in the Hippocratic Oath was to be disregarded because the subjects were not patients.

“It’s clear that in the name of national security, the military trumped that covenant, and physicians were transformed into agents of the military and performed acts that were contrary to medical ethics and practice,” Thomson said. “We have a responsibility to make sure this never happens again.”

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Teacher Calls Parent a ‘Neo-Nazi’ After He Challenged Indoctrination (+video)

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Photo Credit: Josh BarryJosh Barry, the parent of an eighth grader at the East Pennsboro Area School District in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, told the Examiner that an assignment his eldest daughter brought home from school was clear political indoctrination.

After expressing his concerns to the school, a teacher he had never met contacted a mutual friend from Facebook and spoke disparagingly about the dedicated dad.

It all started when Barry, a vigilant parent, reviewed his daughter’s paperwork and was shocked to see a highly political assignment citing a New York Times article that blamed the Republicans for the government “shutdown,” along with a worksheet that accompanied the article.

The worksheet asked in part,

“Whom do you hold most responsible for the government shutdown?”…

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Gay, Transgender Rights Bill Clears First Senate Hurdle

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Photo Credit: APBy Associated Press.

The Senate pushed a major anti-bias gay rights bill past a first, big hurdle Monday, a clear sign of Americans’ greater acceptance of homosexuality nearly two decades after the law prohibiting federal recognition of same-sex marriage.

The vote of 61-30 essentially ensured that the Senate has the votes to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that would prohibit workplace discrimination against gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.

Final passage, possibly by week’s end, would cap a 17-year quest to secure Senate support for a similar discrimination measure that failed by one vote in 1996, the same year Congress passed and President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act.

Reflecting the nation’s shifting views toward gay rights and the fast-changing political dynamic, seven Senate Republicans joined with 54 Democrats to vote to move ahead on the legislation.

“Rights are sometimes intangible but, boy if you’ve ever been discriminated against, seeking employment or seeking an advancement, it’s bitter,” Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., the only openly gay member of the Senate, said after the vote. “And it’s been a long, long fight, but I think its day has come. And that’s just very exciting to witness.”

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Photo Credit: Weekly StandardENDA Would Grant Transgender Rights to Elementary School Teachers

By John McCormack.

According to the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s leading gay rights group, eighty-eight percent of Fortune 500 companies have formal employment policies prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. And it’s likely that almost all other businesses, like Senator Rick Santorum more than a decade ago, have a de facto policy prohibiting such discrimination. It’s hard to imagine that in the year 2013 that any business in the country could fire someone simply because he is gay without facing a major backlash and boycotts.

So does the country now need a new federal law prohibiting such discrimination by private businesses? When Democrats controlled congressional supermajorities from 2009 to 2011, neither Nancy Pelosi nor Harry Reid held a vote on Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). But the Senate is taking up the bill this week, and the vote is being framed in the New York Times as a “test” for Republicans to show that they are not “out of touch with much of the country on social issues.”

A vote for ENDA, however, is not without risk for its supporters. In addition to its gay rights provisions, ENDA creates transgender employment rights. Only 17 states passed laws like that. Furthermore, ENDA contains no exceptions for schools at any age level (though the law does contain a modest religious liberty provision).

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Former Obama Admin Official Van Jones: Obama Will ‘Pay Price’ For Healthcare Promise Reversal

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Photo Credit: Yahoo This morning on “This Week,” Crossfire co-host Van Jones, a former Obama administration official, said the president would “pay a price,” for reversing course on his now famous promise that those Americans who like their plans could keep them if them if they wished under Obamacare.

“”And he overpromised. And he will, listen, he will pay a price. ‘Mission accomplished,’ you pay a price. ‘No new taxes,’ you pay a price. ‘You keep your plan,’ you pay a price,” Jones said.

During his appearance on the “This Week,” roundtable Jones also tweaked the Obama administration for being too ambitious with Healthcare.gov, which has been plagued by problems since its launch last month.

“First of all, they tried to do too much on this website, you could just have the website where you allow people to shop and then they could just call in, I mean, they tried to do too much and I think part of it was because it was a central thing they did, they tried to do too much,” he said.

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Romney: Obama’s Broken Healthcare Promise ‘Rotting Away’ Second Term

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Photo Credit: Getty Images By Mario Trujillo.

Mitt Romney said President Obama’s broken healthcare promise that people who like their insurance can keep it is “rotting away” his second term in office.

If the White House wants to regain trust, Romney said it needs to work with both parties to rebuild the law.

“Whether you like the model of ObamaCare or not the fact that the president sold it on the basis that is not true has undermine the foundation of his second term. I think it is rotting it away,” Romney said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Romney asserted that healthcare would never have passed in 2010 if Obama had been straightforward with the public. He said Obama is not able to lead with his credibility fading.

“We’ve got to have a president that can lead and right now he is not able to do so,” he said.

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Photo Credit: AP/Evan VucciRomney: He Planned ‘Requirement’ That All States Ensure All Are Insured

By Terence P. Jeffrey.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee who lost to President Barack Obama in the 2012 election, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that if he had been elected he planned to have the federal government require state governments to make sure that everyone within their states had health insurance.

“But my own plan was to say to each state, ‘You’ve got a requirement to move to a point where all your people are insured, and where you cover preexisting conditions,” Romney said.

Romney also said: “I had a very conservative platform. And that kind of conservative platform I think is the foundation of any successful campaign in 2016.”

As governor of Massachusetts, Romney signed a law that required everyone in that state to have a government-approved health insurance plan that would be subsidized by the taxpayers for people whose income was below a certain level.

Romneycare has often been called the model for Obamacare, but Romney has rejected that characterization saying he would not impose one plan on the entire country. Instead, he has argued, such health-care reform plans should be imposed state by state.

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’60 Minutes’ Contradicts State’s Key Benghazi Claim: No Orders to Wait

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Photo Credit: WNDAlthough unmentioned by the newsmagazine show, last week’s “60 Minutes” segment on Benghazi apparently contradicts a central element of the State Department’s Accountability Review Board report on the Sept. 11, 2012, attack, WND has found.

“60 Minutes” reported “orders to wait” were given to forces in Tripoli that could have immediately aided the besieged Benghazi compound. However, the Accountability Review Board, or ARB, specifically states the team was “not delayed by orders from superiors.”

The CBS program reported that about “30 minutes into the attack, a quick reaction force from the CIA Annex ignored orders to wait and raced to the compound, at times running and shooting their way through the streets just to get there.”

Continued “60 Minutes” reporter Lara Logan: “Inside the compound, they repelled a force of as many as 60 armed terrorists and managed to save five American lives and recover the body of Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith. They were forced to fight their way out before they could find the ambassador.”

The narrative of ignoring “orders to wait” seems to directly contradict page 23 of the ARB report.

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Graham Says He’ll Continue to Block Obama Nominees Unless He Gets Benghazi Info

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Photo Credit: APSouth Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham reiterated his pledge to block all of Obama’s nominees for executive branch positions until Congress is allowed to hear testimony from those on the ground during the Benghazi terrorist attacks in 2012.

“I shouldn’t have to do this – to make these threats,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Graham says there are still too many unanswered questions about the Sept. 11 attack in Libya that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

While there have been a number of Capitol Hill hearings on the deadly attack in Benghazi, Graham is among a group of lawmakers who say they aren’t satisfied with the information provided and want more.

“I don’t think it’s over the top to find out what happened to four dead Americans,” he said. “I don’t think it’s over the top to talk to survivors. The State Department interviewed these survivors.”

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Riot Warnings Over Food-Stamp Cuts

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Photo Credit: WNDThe 5 percent rollback in food-stamp funding that hit at the start of November has unleashed a wave of familiar scaremongering.

The reduction returns food-stamp benefits to the level they would have been without the infusion of stimulus cash since 2009. That money is now spent, and the average individual monthly benefit is dropping from about $133 to $125.40. Roughly $7.60.

Democrats and the anti-hunger lobby treat the reduction as a cruel and draconian cut.

Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., contends it “will literally take food right out of the mouths of poor children as well as their families, the elderly, the unemployed and the underemployed.”

The rollback “will be close to catastrophic for many people,” a spokesman for Feeding America, a leading hunger relief organization, told CBS News.

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Obama Reportedly Tells Aides: I’m ‘Really Good at Killing People’

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Photo Credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP/GettyA new book covering the 2012 presidential campaign uncovers a series of scathing remarks from political figures, but one alleged comment has stirred controversy around President Barack Obama and his administration’s use of targeted drone strikes.

Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s book “Double Down: Game Change 2012” notes President Obama commenting on drone strikes, reportedly telling his aides that he’s “really good at killing people.”

The quote from the book was first reported in Peter Hamby’s review in the Washington Post.

The White House had not officially commented on the alleged remarks, but senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer dismissed a series of reports from the book, including one that showed Obama campaign officials deciding whether to replace Vice President Joe Biden with Hillary Clinton.

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Romney: Christie ‘Could Easily Become Our Nominee and Save Our Party’

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Photo Credit: AP/Charles DharapakFormer Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who lost the 2012 election to President Barack Obama, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he believed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie could “easily” become the GOP presidential nominee in 2016 and “save our party.”

Christie most recently made national news when he decided to drop a legal challenge to rulings in New Jersey state courts that declared same-sex marriage legal there. And not long before that, he changed his position on the question of whether illegal aliens should get in-state tuition rates at New Jersey state colleges. Now he backs legislation that would give that privilege to illegal aliens.

These two moves won Christie a recent article from the Los Angeles Times that described him as having “staked his place near the political middle ground.”

Romney’s statement that Christie could “save our party” came even as Time Magazine’s website published an excerpt from the upcoming book “Double Down: Game Change 2012” by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, that was featured above the masthead on the Drudge Report, and that describes a Republican vice presidential vetting process that resulted in Romney himself deciding not choosing Christie as his vice presidential running mate.

“Meet the Press” host David Gregory on Sunday asked Romney about the revelations in this book.

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