Obama Delays Employer Mandate, but Leaves HHS Mandate in Effect for Christian Companies

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President Obama’s decision to delay the implementation of Obamacare’s employer mandate gives no relief to Christian business owners who object to providing contraception to employees as required by the Health and Human Services mandate, which remains in effect and on pace to reach the U.S. Supreme Court in the midst of the 2014 midterm elections.

The delay of the employer mandate does not affect religious people who oppose the HHS mandate. “They’re going to be subject to a different penalty,” Kyle Duncan of The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is challenging the constitutionality of the mandate on behalf of a private company, Hobby Lobby, told the Washington Examiner. “Not the $2,000 per employee penalty that the administration has said it’s going to suspend for the year, but the $100 per employee, per day, IRS excise tax which is in a different section of the IRS code, but the administration has not said they’re going to suspend that.”

Duncan explained that “the reporting requirements that trigger the excise tax, those are different reporting requirements under different Treasury regulations; they predate the Affordable Care Act altogether.”

Michael Cannon, the Cato Institute’s health care policy expert, agreed with Duncan’s assessment. “It’s not that the Obama administration is unwilling to relax onerous mandates on employers,” he noted in an email to the Examiner. “They just don’t think religious freedom is a good enough reason.”

Read more from this story HERE.

54 Months: Record Stretch of 7.5%+ Unemployment Continues

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Photo Credit: APSince January 2009, when Barack Obama was inaugurated as president, the United States has seen 54 straight months with the unemployment rate at 7.5 percent or higher, which is the longest stretch of unemployment at or above that rate since 1948, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics started calculating the national unemployment rate.

Today, BLS reported that the seasonally adjusted national unemployment rate for June was 7.6 percent, the same it was in May.

In December 2008, the month after Obama was first elected and the month before he was inaugurated, unemployment was 7.3 percent. In January 2009, it climbed to 7.8 percent. In February, the month Obama signed what the Congressional Budget Office would later determine was an $830 billion economic stimulus law, the unemployment rate climbed to 8.3 percent.

In the Obama era, the unemployment rate peaked at 10.0 percent in October 2010. It did not dip below 9 percent until October 2011, when it hit 8.9 percent. From August to September 2012, it dropped from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent—the first time during Obama’s tenure it went under 8 percent.

Read more from this story HERE.

CBO on Amnesty Bill: Probably Would Not Even Stop Half of Illegal Border Crossings

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Photo Credit: Gregory BullBy Stephen Dinan. Spending $35 billion on new Border Patrol agents and fencing would keep tens of thousands of new illegal immigrants from crossing the border each year, but would still only stop between a third and half of future illegal immigration, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s latest analysis released Wednesday.

The CBO looked at the latest version of the Senate’s immigration bill, which cleared the chamber in a 68-32 vote last week, and said it would reduce but not eliminate illegal immigration.

The “CBO estimates that the net inflow would be reduced by between one-third and one-half compared with the projected net inflow under current law. That effect would not be immediate, as it would take several years before [the Department of Homeland Security] could hire the full number of Border Patrol agents called for in the act,” the nonpartisan agency said in the section of its new analysis dealing with future illegal immigration.

The CBO also had continued good news about an immigration bill’s effects on the federal budget, saying that the additional legal workers will boost the economy and lead to nearly $1 trillion in new tax revenue over the next 20 years.

Wednesday’s analysis was an update to the CBO’s first crack last month at the Senate bill as it emerged from the Judiciary Committee. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: APTea Party groups ramp up fight against immigration bill, as August recess looms

By Fox News. After spending weeks dealing with the fallout from the IRS targeting scandal, Tea Party groups are starting to focus their energy on the immigration bill — a development that could imperil President Obama’s hopes for a speedy approval.

Before adjourning for the Fourth of July holiday break, the Senate easily approved its version of the legislation. The bill now rests with the House, where Republicans say they will take up their own version.

Obama, during his Africa trip, called on the House to “get this done” before the August recess.

But House lawmakers already are hearing conservative calls to slow things down. And if the debate leaks into August — when Congress takes a nearly month-long recess — the prospects could get even more wobbly. The Tea Party, during the 2009 August recess, famously helped stall ObamaCare by storming town hall meetings and other events.

Tea Party groups may be preparing to again mount demonstrations during the summer break. And even if the House passes a bill this month, it’s unlikely the two chambers would be able to agree on a unified piece of legislation by August — leaving the work unfinished going into recess. Read more from this story HERE.

Nugent’s 2016 Presidential Slogan: “I Have 9 Kids from 7 Women”

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Photo Credit: Raw Story Nugent’s 2016 slogan: ‘I have 9 children from 7 women, and I’m running for president’

By David Edwards. Conservative rocker Ted Nugent says he’s considering running in 2016 and already has a campaign pitch: “Hi, I’m Ted Nugent. I have nine children from seven women, and I’m running for president.”

In a Washington Post Magazine story published this week, Nugent told Steve Hendrix that he was “thinking about it.”

Nugent’s wife of 24 years, Shemane, explained that he had talked about running before, “but this time he seems more serious. People are constantly asking him to run.”

In the 1980s and the mid-2000s, 66-year-old brother brother Jeff Nugent helped him do polling for a possible run for Michigan governor. At one point, New Mexico Republicans also attempted to draft him to run for governor of their state.

In the end, Nugent said that campaigning and governing would disrupt his hunting plans. Read more from this story HERE.

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Ted, white and blue: How Ted Nugent has rocked politics

By Steve Hendrix. On the final morning of the 2013 NRA annual convention in May, the day was bright, the mood was festive and Ted Nugent was neither dead nor in jail.

It was almost exactly a year earlier that Nugent, speaking on video at the NRA gathering in St. Louis, had made headlines by predicting one or the other would be his fate should Barack Obama become a two-termer. As far as incendiary rhetoric by the rocker-hunter-conservative firebrand goes, this was pretty tame stuff.

He has referred to Obama as a “piece of s–t” and members of his administration as “criminals,” and implored the president to “suck on my machine gun.” The “dead or in jail” comment was notable mostly for prompting a visit by the Secret Service, a meeting Nugent laughed off as a pro forma check-in from agents he described as more star-struck than suspicious…

Now, the constant beseeching from fans and followers has Nugent eyeing a run for the Republican nomination, the party he aligns with as the lesser of two feebles. (He is one of the few Republicans who will disparage Ronald Reagan, mainly for signing a bill restricting machine-gun sales.)

“Things are just so wrong in the country now,” Nugent said. “And I know that my answers would make things wonderful, unless you just refuse to produce, and then I’d recommend that you move to Canada. Or Illinois.” Read more from this story HERE.

Obamacare to Punish Healthy Eaters as Insurance Rates Double or Triple for Those who Choose to Take Care of their Health

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Photo Credit: Natural NewsAccording to an analysis just published by the Wall Street Journal, healthy people will pay double or triple their current health insurance rates under Obamacare. Rates for those with chronic disease, however, will be reduced as all the healthy people subsidize their disease lifestyles.

The net effect is that people who choose to follow a healthy lifestyle — eating well, taking nutritional supplements, exercising and avoiding junk foods — will be financially punished by the federal government while those who choose to follow a disease and sickness lifestyle — eating junk foods, taking meds, refusing to exercise, etc. — will be rewarded by government.

This is the essence of socialized medicine: punish responsible citizens while rewarding those who refuse to take care of their health.

Disease is a matter of cause and effect, not luck

Obamacare, like all socialized medicine systems, is based on the false premise that health outcomes are a matter of pure luck. Disease just “randomly strikes people,” the thinking goes, and individuals have nothing to do with their own health. This false belief fits nicely with the financial interests of Big Pharma and doctors, of course, because it puts the power of health in the hands of corporations and medical personnel.

Read more from this story HERE.

71% of Americans Believe Nation’s Founders Would Be Disappointed With US

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As the United States celebrates Independence Day, most of its adult residents continue to say they are proud to be an American, including 57% who are extremely proud and 28% who are very proud. This high level of pride in being an American has varied only moderately over the past 12 years since the question was first asked, but has been lower since 2005 than it was in the years prior…

Conservatives and Republicans are also slightly more likely to say they are proud than are liberals and Democrats…

Despite their widespread national pride, Americans evince a much more negative response when asked if the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be pleased or disappointed by the way the United States has turned out. Seventy-one percent of Americans say the signers would be disappointed, while 27% say they would be pleased.

Read more from this story HERE.

National Guard Troops and Staff to be Furloughed

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Photo Credit: APMore than 1,100 National Guard soldiers and airmen in Hawaii — and thousands in other states — will be living with 20 percent less pay over the next three months as the Defense Department carries out automatic federal budget cuts.

Guard members will be furloughed for one day a week starting Monday, so helicopter pilots and mechanics, pay and finance clerks and others who keep the guard operating will have eight hours less each week to do their jobs.

It’s not clear precisely what effects the unprecedented cuts will have. They could, however, make it more difficult for the guard to fly helicopters to help put out wildfires or rush to the scene of natural disasters in trucks.

“Our general sense is that short-term, it’s going to be a terrible hardship for those soldiers, airmen and their families. But if it goes on for any length of time, that may have a negative impact on our readiness and our ability to respond,” said Hawaii National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Chuck Anthony.

The military’s furloughs were only supposed to involve civilians, but large numbers of National Guard members who wear Army and Air Force uniforms full-time will experience them as well. The National Guard added military technicians to the furlough list in May, after Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel gave official notice to begin furloughs for civilians.

Read more from this story HERE.

Liberal Nonprofit that Pressed IRS Commissioner to Target Conservatives Houses his Wife’s Group

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Photo Credit: Daily CallerThe progressive nonprofit organization Common Cause urged then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman to investigate activities of conservative donors despite housing the campaign-reform group that employs Shulman’s wife.

In 2012, Common Cause urged Shulman and fellow embattled IRS official Lois Lerner, director of the agency’s tax-exempt organizations division, to investigate the Koch Brothers’ attempted takeover of the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute.

“Common Cause respectfully requests that the Internal Revenue Service initiate an investigation into whether attempts by Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch, shareholders of the Cato Institute, to take control of and manipulate the Cato Institute for partisan political purposes expose a flaw in the Cato Institute’s structure that jeopardizes its tax exempt status under 26 U.S.C. 501(c)(3),” Common Cause president Bob Edgar wrote in a letter to Shulman and fellow IRS official Lois Lerner dated March 9, 2012.

Edgar, who died in April of this year, described “grave questions about whether the Kochs are exploiting Cato’s corporate structure to transform the Cato Institute from its longstanding, storied reputation as a nonpartisan, libertarian think tank into a partisan organization in contravention of its educative and charitable purpose.

“For these reasons, the Internal Revenue Service should open an investigation into the impact of the Kochs’ attempt to control the Cato Institute to advance their own political and economic interests, and whether Cato can maintain its charitable, tax-exempt status without changing its ownership structure,” Edgar wrote.

Read more from this story HERE.

Pro-Abortion Activists in Texas Threaten Lawmakers, Want Their Daughters Raped

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Photo Credit: National Review By Betsy Woodruff. Pro-life legislators in the Texas statehouse have faced threats and abuse from pro-choice protesters, prompting at least one to bring in extra volunteers to help with security.

State representative Jonathan Stickland tells NRO that being vocally pro-life has made him a target for abuse and threats from some of the pro-choice protesters in Austin. The night before state senator Wendy Davis’s filibuster, she requested that people send her stories about the importance of abortion rights that she could read during the filibuster. Stickland tells me that inspired him and a few other representatives from Tarrant County (part of which is in Davis’s senate district) to send in 84,160 pieces of blank pink and blue paper to represent the number of abortions in Texas last year.

“We delivered them to her office so that she could read the untold stories of all the kids who were aborted last year,” he says, adding that the gesture made him the target of intense vitriol, including thousands of tweets. Many were “very, very hostile,” he says.

“My favorite one was probably this female who said that she couldn’t wait to see Representative Stickland so that she could pummel my face in,” he tells me…

State senator Donna Cambell [has] received Facebook messages and e-mails saying, “I hope you’re raped” and “I hope your daughter’s raped”…Read more from this story HERE.

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Texas Committee Passes Bill to Ban Abortions at 20 Weeks

By Steven Ertelt. The House State Affairs Committee last night passed a pro-life bill to ban abortions in the state after 20 weeks of pregnancy and hold abortion facilities accountable for obeying health and safety laws.

The last attempt to pass the bill was halted in the state Senate with a pro-abortion filibuster but state Sen. Wendy Davis says she will not filibuster the bill a second time.

The bill would ban abortions after 20 weeks and hold abortion clinics accountable by making them meet basic health and safety standards that have closed facilities in other states that are unable to comply. The bill also requires all abortion clinics to meet the same health and safety regulations as an ambulatory surgical center, requires a doctor providing abortions to secure admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, and lastly, requires a doctor to personally administer the abortion-inducing drugs to the patient.

The hearing saw the halls packed with over 2,100 people wanting to testify on the bill — with most of them pro-life and supporting it. The final count on the bill was 3,543 who registered a position with the Texas government computer system — 2,181 supporting the bill and 1,335 against it.

“In terms of witnesses, the system has never seen overload like this,” said Rep. Helen Giddings, the vice chairwoman of the House State Affairs Committee. Read more from this story HERE.

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Pro-Abortion Mom Makes Child Hold “Stay Out of My Womb” Sign With F-Bomb

Photo Credit: Life News

Outrage: Immigrants Account For ALL Job Gains Since 2000, While Native-Born Americans’ Employment Has Fallen

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Photo Credit: APImmigrants — both legal and illegal — have accounted for all of the job gains in the U.S. labor market since 2000, according to a report that highlights the stiff competition for jobs in a tight economy as Congress debates adding more workers to the mix.

The Center for Immigration Studies report, which is being released Wednesday, says 22.4 million immigrants of working age held jobs at the beginning of this year, up 5.3 million over the total in 2000. But native-born workers with jobs dropped 1.3 million over that same period, from 114.8 million to 113.5 million.

Meanwhile, the number of Americans who aren’t in the labor force at all has jumped by almost 13 million to reach 48.6 million — a finding the report’s authors say signals profound changes in the American job market and challenges conventional wisdom that immigration is good for the economy.

“The last 13 years, or even the last five years, make clear that large-scale immigration can go hand-in-hand with weak job growth and declining rates of work among the native-born,” the authors, Steven A. Camarota and Karen Zeigler, say in their report. “Given the employment situation in the country, the dramatic increases in legal immigration contemplated by the Gang of Eight immigration bill seem out of touch with the realities of the U.S. labor market.”

Whether immigrants compete for jobs is a heated topic — though the Senate all but ignored it during the chamber’s debate on its bill to legalize most illegal immigrants and create opportunities for new immigrants and temporary workers to enter the U.S.

Read more from this story HERE.