Huckabee 2016: ‘The Honest Answer Is Maybe’

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Photo Credit: KUTVHe was Mitt Romney’s political rival in the 2008 Republican presidential primaries. Like Romney, Mike Huckabee lost, but he gained an undeniably strong presence on radio and television.

Huckabee also picked up—among some people—a sense of being anti-Mormon.

“It really hurts me to hear that,” said Huckabee, in an exclusive interview with 2News Thursday. “Anybody who knows me knows the respect I have for the Mormon Church is extraordinary, because there has been moral clarity from the Mormon Church on such issues as Prop 8 in California, and pro-life issues.”

The former Baptist minister, former Governor of Arkansas, was in Salt Lake to speak at a convention for a company known as Express Employment Professionals at the Grand America. He also did his daily radio show from Salt Lake, a program aired on nearly 200 stations around the country.

“So this notion that I am somehow anti-Mormon is absolutely not true, never has been,” said Huckabee, who counts former Utah governors Mike Leavitt and John Huntsman—both LDS—as friends. Huckabee said he supported and campaigned “all over the country” for Romney in 2012, and thought Romney would win.

Romney’s political career seems over, but Huckabee said he might make another run for the White House, as soon as 2016. “I’m not ruling it out. The honest answer is maybe,” he told 2News. “I know a little bit of the depth of the water I’d be diving into, so I’ve got to make that decision very carefully and prayerfully.”

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Shouting Match Erupts in Senate Hearing on Gun Ban

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During a scheduled hearing today of the Senate Judiciary Committee, senators clashed over the proposal of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that would ban hundreds of types of firearms, including the popular AR-15 rifle and semiautomatic handguns.

The bill would also ban magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

The Democrat-controlled Senate apparently made sure that the room where the hearing was held was packed with supporters of the gun ban. Attendees cheered witnesses who testified in favor of the ban, particularly when they clashed with Republicans on the committee.

At one point U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., asked Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn if his department was currently enforcing laws already on the books regarding background checks. The question elicited a sharp response from Flynn who exploded into a tirade about the fact that his department is focused on catching criminals rather than engaging in pencil-pushing.

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Teachers Outnumbered In Schools By Administrators, Support Staff In Many States, Study Shows

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Photo Credit: APEach day, students in 21 states will see more librarians, bus drivers, coaches and cafeteria workers than teachers, according to a new study that examined school hiring patterns over the past two decades.

The report, released Thursday by the Friedman Foundation For Educational Choice, found that Virginia, Ohio, Oregon, Maine, Indiana and a number of states- and the District of Columbia- employ more non-classroom personnel than teachers, some by a wide margin.

Virginia came in at the top of the list, with 60,737 more non-teaching staff than instructors, according to the study. Ohio was No. 2, with a disparity of 19,040.

“Taxpayers should be outraged [that] public schools hired so many non-teaching personnel with such little academic improvement among students to show for it,” said Robert Enlow, president and CEO of the foundation, which was founded by the late Nobel laureate Milton Friedman and is among the most vocal proponents of school choice.

“This money could have been better invested in areas that have proved to benefit children,” Mr. Enlow added. But the study’s findings surely will be challenged. Critics have taken aim at previous Friedman Foundation reports, including last fall’s “School Staffing Surge,” which showed that states’ and school districts’ hiring rates have far outpaced the growth of student populations.

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Poll: Internet Edges Networks As Public’s Source For News

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Photo Credit: APBye bye Walter Cronkite, Brian Williams and Scott Pelley. Hello Google, Yahoo and Drudge.

A new Rasmussen Reports poll finds that traditional network news continues to fall as the nation’s source for news. The internet now is a bigger source of news for Americans than network TV, by a point, 25 percent to 24 percent.

Cable TV is still king, with 32 percent of the 1,000 likely voters Rasmussen polled getting their news from that source. Newspapers barely register a 10 percent, and radio is the source of news for 7 percent of the country.

The poll gauged how well the public trusted the media and if they see a bias. On both fronts, it is bad news.

Just 6 percent of the nation considers the national media “very trustworthy,” and nearly half believe reporters are more liberal than they are, said Rasmussen.

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Former Clinton Aide, Columnist Joins Woodward In Claiming White House Threat (+video)

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Photo Credit: APAnother member of the Washington political media stepped forward Thursday to claim he was threatened by the Obama White House, shortly after the White House denied reports that an adviser threatened famed Watergate journalist Bob Woodward.

The latest claim comes from Lanny Davis, who served as counsel to former President Bill Clinton and later went on to write a column for The Washington Times. In a radio interview on WMAL, Davis said that a “senior Obama White House official” once called his editor at the Times and said that if the paper continued to run his columns, “his reporters would lose their credentials.”

Davis said he “couldn’t imagine why this call was made” since he’s an Obama supporter. But he called the alleged threat “unfortunate.”

The account comes after Woodward claimed Wednesday night that a White House aide sent him an email saying he would “regret” his recent reporting on the sequester battle. The aide was not identified, but an official familiar with the exchange told Fox News it was National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling — the tone of the email was rather mixed, as it also included an apology. That was after Woodward wrote a column this past weekend claiming Obama was trying to re-write history — regarding not only whose idea the sequester was, but also how it would take effect.

Woodward wrote that based on his reporting earlier in the budget battle, the president was trying to move the goalposts by trying to replace the sequester with a mix of tax hikes and spending cuts — instead of solely spending cuts.

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New Bills Would Halt Health Law’s Employer Mandate

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photo credit: 401(k)2013House and Senate bills introduced Thursday would kill a key provision of President Obama’s healthcare law — the mandate that most employers must offer health benefits to workers.

The legislation was introduced by prominent Republicans, who called the requirement a “job killer.”

“The employer mandate is a drag on our economy, forcing too many of our nation’s job creators to stop hiring and grow their businesses in order to comply with this onerous provision in president’s health law,” Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah) said in a statement.

“Instead of letting the federal government dictate how employers should allocate resources, let’s repeal this job-killing mandate and let businesses get back in the business of hiring,” Hatch said.

The employer mandate requires that companies of 50 or more workers provide health insurance or pay fines if more than 30 employees receive government assistance to buy coverage. The health offerings must be affordable, and they must include a variety of “essential health benefits.”

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Cult Of Obama: List Of Journalists Throwing Woodward Under The Bus

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Photo Credit: Breitbart The media stands by its own, at least until one of its own upsets The Narrative. Not even a living legend is immune from this rule. In the case of Bob Woodward, his detailed and lengthy reporting on sequester has resulted in the possible derailing of the most crucial Narrative the White House and media are likely to launch this year. The fate of Obama’s second term and even his legacy rest on it.

The endgame of The Sequester Hustle is to blame the economy tanking on cutting less than 2% of the federal budget. Obama doesn’t want his failed first-term policies blamed for a double-dip recession, so he’s playing Chicken Little with sequester so the GOP and a lack of government largess are blamed. Naturally, the media is as all-in on this con as their Master is.

This, even though everyone knows it was Obama who suggested sequester, saw it passed, and then signed it into law.

Woodward’s reporting threatens to monkey wrench all of this. His reporting not only confirmed that sequester was Obama’s idea but that Obama moved the goal posts with his demand for tax increases. The original sequester deal did not include tax increases.

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Harvard Crimson To Conservatives: Don’t Apply To Harvard

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Photo Credit: Joseph BarillariThe Harvard Crimson published an editorial urging conservatives not to apply to Harvard if they intend to criticize the university down the line for political points.

The editorial, titled “Warning: Do Not Enroll,” denigrates famous conservatives who graduated from Harvard and later sharply — and perhaps hypocritically — complained about the university’s liberal ideology, including former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, and Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly.

“If we could have spoken to these three men, we would have told them never to come to Cambridge,” wrote the staff of the Crimson. “We at The Crimson urge anyone who plans on one day scoring political points by maligning Harvard to neither apply, enroll, nor graduate from this fine institution.”

All three of the figures mentioned in the editorial have frequently and publicly criticized the political environment at Harvard. Cruz recently commented that during his time on campus, some members of the faculty were “Marxists who believed in … overthrowing the United States government.”

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Only 6% Rate News Media As Very Trustworthy

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Photo Credit: secretlondon123Most voters still get their news from television and consider the news reported by the media generally trustworthy.

Fifty-six percent (56%) of Likely U.S. Voters say they get most of their news from TV, including 32% who get it from cable news networks and 24% who get it from traditional network news. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that another 25% use the Internet as their main source of news, while only 10% still rely on print newspapers. Seven percent (7%) get most of their news from radio. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Fifty-six percent (56%) of all voters regard the news reported by the media as at least somewhat trustworthy, but that includes just six percent who think it is Very Trustworthy. Forty-two percent (42%) don’t trust the news media, with 12% who believe the news it reports is Not At All Trustworthy.

Last September, as the final stretch of the presidential race heated up, 40% of American Adults said the Internet was the best way to get news and information in today’s world, while 37% viewed television that way. Nine percent (9%) rated radio as the best source, and seven percent (7%) chose print newspapers. TV broadcast news was considered the most reliable, followed by the Internet and newspapers.

Forty-one percent (41%) of voters think the average media reporter is more liberal than they are, down slightly from 46% in June 2011. Unchanged from the earlier survey are the 18% who feel the average reporter is more conservative than they are, while 26% think their views are about the same. Fifteen percent (15%) are not sure.

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DOJ Spends Millions On ‘Nonmission’ Luxury Travel For Attorney Generals, FBI Director

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller A Government Accountability Office report reveals that the Justice Department has spent $11.4 million to fly the Attorney General and FBI director on FBI luxury jets for travel unrelated to the agency’s mission.

Iowa Republican and ranking judiciary committee member Sen. Chuck Grassley — who requested GAO look into Justice Department aircraft being used to for “nonmission” reasons — released the report Thursday.

“These luxury jets were supposedly needed for counterterrorism, but it turns out that they were used almost two-thirds of the time for jet-setting executive travel instead,” Grassley said. “Nobody disputes that the Attorney General and the FBI Director should have access to the secure communications, but, for instance, there’s no reason they can’t take a less expensive mode of transportation, or cut their personal travel.”

The GAO looked at nonmission jet use from 2007-2011. In that timeframe, the report explains, the “three individuals who served as Attorney General (AG) and the Director of the Federal Bureau Of Investigation (FBI) accounted for 95 percent (659 out of 697 flights) of all Department of Justice (DOJ) executive nonmission flights using DOJ aircraft at a total cost of $11.4 million.”

According to the report, personal flights accounted for 24 percent of nonmission flights and that the AGs and FBI director reimbursed that travel “in accordance with federal requirements.” Yet, as the report notes, that reimbursement “is generally less than the cost of operating a government aircraft” as it is largely reimbursed at the cost of a commercial rate.

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