Rand Paul Wins The Washington Times-CPAC 2013 Straw Poll

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Photo Credit: ANDREW HARNIK

Sen. Rand Paul won the 2013 Washington Times-CPAC presidential preference straw poll Saturday, and Sen. Marco Rubio was a close second, easily outdistancing the rest of the field and signaling the rise of a new generation of conservative leaders who will take the Republican Party into the 2016 election.

Mr. Paul won 25 percent of the vote, and Mr. Rubio collected 23 percent. Former Sen. Rick Santorum was third with just 8 percent, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — who was not invited to speak at the three-day Conservative Political Action Conference — was next with 7 percent, and Rep. Paul D. Ryan, the GOP’s vice presidential nominee last year, was fifth with 6 percent.

Mr. Paul’s victory puts him in the footsteps of his father, former Rep. Ron Paul, who won in 2010 and 2011.

“I’ve been standing with Rand since I came out of the womb,” said Austin Alexander, a 26-year-old consultant from New York who voted for the senator in the straw poll and who volunteered for the elder Mr. Paul’s campaign in 2012. Mr. Alexander said he believes the GOP is moving in the direction the Pauls espouse.

Mr. Rubio, meanwhile, won the hearts of more traditional conservatives. “I’ve been a supporter for Marco, like a lot of people, since the first time I heard the guy speak,” said Gary Kim, 62, from Colorado, who described himself as a social conservative and said Mr. Rubio can deliver that message in a way previous candidates such as Mr. Santorum could not.

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Democrats Step Back From Ashley Judd For Senate Drive

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Hollywood actress-turned-Senate-hopeful Ashley Judd may have a harder time winning the hearts and minds of Democrats to support her campaign against Sen. Mitch McConnell after all.

Democratic Party leaders are stepping back and taking a clear look at the candidate, and some say she may not be best to run against the five-term Kentucky senator in 2014, Newsmax reports.

“She’s going to have a tough road to hoe,” said Jim Cauley, campaign manager for Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear in 2007, in a ThisWeek.com report. “She doesn’t fit the damn state,” which is a conservative stronghold. Fully 60 percent of Kentuckians voted for Mitt Romney in 2012.

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+$30.5B: Federal Spending Up, Not Down, In First 5 Months of FY13

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Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite

Federal spending was up $30.5 billion in the first five months of fiscal 2013 compared to the first five months of fiscal 2012, according to newly released data from the U.S. Treasury.

The federal fiscal year begins on Oct. 1 and runs through Sept. 30. In the first five months of fiscal 2012 (October through February), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement, total federal spending was approximately $1,473,999,000,000.00. In the first five months of fiscal 2013, total federal spending was $1,504,547,000,000.00.

Thus, federal spending was $30,548,000,000.00 more in the first five months of fiscal 2013 than it was during the first five months of fiscal 2012.

The federal government is also spending at a much faster pace this year than it did before President Barack Obama took office.

In the first five months of fiscal 2008 (the last full fiscal year before Obama took office), the federal government spent $1,230,412,000,000.00. That is $274,315,000,000.00 less than the $1,504,547,000,000.00 that the federal government spent in the first five months of this fiscal year.

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Portman’s Gay Marriage Stance Sparks Conservative Backlash

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Sen. Rob Portman on Friday became the first Republican in the Senate to support gay marriage — and his switch set off harsh words from many conservatives.

“Sen. Portman is a great friend and ally, and the speaker respects his position,” Michael Steel, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, told Politico. “But the speaker continues to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.”

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said that it was Portman’s “prerogative” to change his views on same-sex marriage, but that the traditional definition of marriage won’t change “no matter what politicians decide.”

“I don’t think they have the power to change what is a religiously inspired definition,” the Georgia GOP leader told CNN.

And Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said to cheers at the Conservative Political Action Caucus in Washington: “Just because I believe that states should have the right to define marriage in a traditional way does not make me a bigot.” In an essay published on Friday in the Columbus Dispatch, the Ohio senator said that his reversal was based on him and his wife, Jane, learning two years ago that their son, Will, 21, was gay.

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Google Glass: The Opposition Grows

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Photo Credit: Chris Matyszczyk

The opposition will congregate in dark corners. They will whisper with their mouths, while their eyes will scan the room for spies wearing strange spectacles.

The spies will likely be men. How many women would really like to waft down the street wearing Google Glass? It won’t be easy. Once you’ve been cybernated, there’s no turning back. Which is why the refuseniks are already meeting in shaded corners of the Web. One site is called “Stop The Cyborgs.” It claims to be “fighting the algorithmic future one bit at a time.”

It’s going to take a lot of bitty fighting, but the people behind this site — they’re naturally anonymous, in an attempt to stop Google spying on them — say they’re fighting Google Glass in particular.

They say that it will herald a world in which “privacy is impossible and corporate control total.”

Some would say that, thanks to Googlies and other bright, deluded sparks, we’re there already. The Lord and Master Zuckerberg explained to us a long time ago that he knows us better than we do and that we don’t actually want privacy at all.

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Court Orders CIA to Acknowledge Drones

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The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) must acknowledge whether an armed drone program exists, a federal appellate court ruled on Friday.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) took the CIA to court after filing a Freedom of Information request about drone strikes overseas. The CIA denied the request, saying it could not release any documents because even acknowledging the existence of the program would harm national security.

“The existence or nonexistence of CIA records responsive to this request is a currently and properly classified fact, the disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause damage to the national security,” the CIA argued to the court, which initially agreed.

But on Friday, the appellate court overturned the earlier decision, noting that President Obama and other senior intelligence officials have talked openly about drone strikes in recent months, undercutting the CIA’s argument that acknowledging its role in the operation could harm national security.

“The defendant is, after all, the Central Intelligence Agency. And it strains credulity to suggest that an agency charged with gathering intelligence affecting the national security does not have an ‘intelligence interest’ in drone strikes, even if that agency does not operate the drones itself,” Chief Judge Merrick B. Garland wrote.

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North Dakota Passes Most Restrictive Abortion Bills In Nation

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North Dakota’s Senate passed a pair of anti-abortion measures Friday that are considered to be the most restrictive in the nation, including one that would prevent women from having an abortion based on a genetic defect.

The measures now to go to Republican Gov. Jack Dalrymple who has indicated he will sign them.

The new state laws are even more strict than one finalized last week in Arkansas that would make the procedure illegal after 12 weeks of pregnancy. One North Dakota measure would prevent women from having abortions based on a genetic defect, like Down syndrome. The other would ban doctors from performing an abortion if a fetal heartbeat is detected — as early as five or six weeks.

Republican state Rep. Bette Grande of Fargo sponsored both bills. Grande, a ninth-term legislator, is one of the more conservative lawmakers in the state. She’s pushed for controversial right-to-life issues and has been vocal about the issues.

Grande recently said she had relatives who had children born with genetic abnormalities and has been surprised at the discrimination she’s seen. “It takes you back to Hitler, and we know where that went,” she has said. “He started going after those with abnormalities, and I think it’s an absurdity we would go back to that kind of thing.”

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Insecure Social Security: House Oversight Committee Investigating Fraud And Waste In Social Security Program

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Fraud could be a major reason that the number of people enrolled in Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) has risen so dramatically over the past 10 years, according to two letters written by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The number of enrollees in the program grew by almost 60 percent between 2003 and 2012, from 5.58 million to 8.82 million people, the March 11 letter to acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration Carolyn Colvin says. This rate of growth is twice what the previous decade experienced.

The increase is likely not coming from people who actually need the care, the letter contends. Fraudulent enrollment and improper payments are pushing up the numbers.

The letter, signed by Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) and two subcommittee chairmen, points out “significant management problems that lead to misspending within the program.”

The letter says many ineligible people are receiving benefits citing a 2010 Government Accountability Office report. For example, some people receive SSDI before receiving a Commercial Drivers License, which requires a rigorous physical exam—indicating that they are not disabled. And some people simply lie about their income to receive the benefits, according to the chairmen.

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LA Times Says Conservative White Men Worse Than Terrorists, Monitoring Needed

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According to an op-ed at the Los Angeles Times, conservative white men who support the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms are worse than international terrorists and need to be monitored by the federal government, Infowars reported Wednesday.

The op-ed, written after the Southern Poverty Law Center demanded the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security “crack down on Americans expressing opposition to an increasingly tyrannical federal government,” claims there are “cells of angry men in the United States preparing for combat with the U.S. government.”

“They are usually heavily armed, blinded by an intractable hatred, often motivated by religious zeal,” the Times wrote.

Kurt Nimmo accused the paper of racism for singling out white men as the culprit that needs to be dealt with by the federal government.

“They are white, right-wing Americans, nearly all with an obsessive attachment to guns, who may represent a greater danger to the lives of American civilians than international terrorists,” the Times said.

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RNC to Revamp GOTV Operations

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The Republican National Committee is moving forward with a comprehensive overhaul of its antiquated voter turnout operation, including a focus on fixing a collection of broken state parties, CQ Roll Call confirmed Friday.

The effort will be directed by the RNC’s political department, under the supervision of political director Chris McNulty and a full-time state party director — a new committee position created as part of the get-out-the-vote overhaul. The modernized national field operation will focus on improving voter registration, identification and turnout through a “bottom-up” approach that reinvigorates the party organization at the precinct, congressional district and state levels.

Under this strategy, the RNC plans to immediately reform its training program for grass-roots activists to encompass the committee’s new attention on data gathering, technology and analytics with a complete revamp of its political education department slated to conclude by May 1. Similar to President Barack Obama’s successful formula, the RNC wants to transform its GOTV into an ongoing national program that relies on “peer-to-peer” contact where people live, work, worship, learn and buy their coffee.

“This is a big initiative in which we will be simultaneously revamping our grass-roots organizing infrastructure and voter contact programs from top to bottom while integrating a minority engagement structure to work in unison toward the goal of electing more Republicans,” McNulty told CQ Roll Call. “The key to the entire grass-roots infrastructure will be working with state and county parties toward a new and exciting bottom-up precinct team structure. All of this will be driven by the new and improved data infrastructure and analytics at the RNC.”

Overhauling the RNC’s field operation was one of several recommendations included in an autopsy report of the 2012 elections that RNC Chairman Reince Priebus is scheduled to unveil Monday.

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