Dick Retta stands outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in downtown Washington three days a week, trying to persuade pregnant women not to get abortions. The 80-year-old grandfather has been coming to the clinic for eight years and said he’s personally persuaded over 400 women to leave this clinic and others.

Retta says his approach is friendly, gentle and loving. Government lawyers portray him differently, calling him “among the most vocal and aggressive anti-abortion protestors” outside the clinic.

In court documents, they say he routinely follows patients entering the building and yells at them as the clinic door closes. Last year he physically blocked a woman from entering the clinic, shouting at her not to kill her baby, they say.

As a result they sued Retta over last year’s incident, using a 1994 law that makes it a crime to intimidate or interfere with someone obtaining reproductive health services. He is one of a handful of people nationwide charged every year under the law. Lawyers for the government and Retta have a meeting before a judge Thursday to see if they can come to an agreement in the case, but it’s unclear how likely that is.

“They’d like to get rid of me,” said Retta, who acknowledges he’s persistent and assertive with his message but denies ever blocking access to the clinic.

Read More at OfficialWire By Jessica Gresko

Photo Credit: WeNews Creative Commons

Not long before Dick Armey – a conservative Republican constitutionalist – retired as House majority leader, he gave a speech expressing his worry about the government’s increasing blanket surveillance over We the People. He practically begged President George W. Bush to “use these tools we have given you to make us safe in such a manner that’ll preserve our freedom” (my book, “The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance,” Seven Stories Press, 2003).

Bush’s response, alas, was to listen more and more to Vice President Dick Cheney.

And now for the first time in American history, according to the Government Accountability Project’s Jesselyn Radack, Attorney General Eric Holder has officially and publicly declared “new guidelines that permit the federal counterterrorism investigators to collect, search and store data about Americans who are not suspected of terrorism, or anything …

“According to the Justice Department, law enforcement and other national security agencies can copy entire databases and sift through the data for suspicious patterns to stop potential terrorist threats” (“Govt. Keeping Data on Americans With No Connection to Terrorism,” whistleblower.org, March 23).

Where in the Constitution do “suspicious patterns” – otherwise undefined and outside the jurisdiction of our courts – allow the government to put large and growing numbers of us into databases for future tracking?

Read More at WND.

A boy who became a girl got her wish to compete for title of hottest woman on the planet after Donald Trump said she could compete for Canada’s spot in the Miss Universe pageant.

Trump, who runs the Miss Universe Organization, issued a statement Tuesday wishing Jenna Talackova “the best of luck in her quest for the crown.” The statement came the same day that Talackova and her attorney Gloria Allred urged the organization to clarify its gender requirements.

The organization said it actually made the decision Monday to let the 23-year-old Talackova compete in the 2012 competition to become Canada’s contestant.

The organization said Talackova could enter the pageant “provided she meets the legal gender recognition requirements of Canada, and the standards established by other international competitions.” No further details were provided.

Earlier Tuesday, Talackova and her attorney Gloria Allred urged the organization to clarify its position, and displayed a copy of Talackova’s passport, which lists her as female, as do her birth certificate and driver’s license.

Read More at OfficialWire. By Robert Jablon, AP.

 Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore (Creative Commons)

President Obama on Tuesday is expected to take aim at House Republicans, calling the budget proposal put forward by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) “a Trojan horse” that seeks to “impose a radical vision” on the United States.

“It’s nothing but thinly veiled Social Darwinism,” Obama will say at an Associated Press lunch, according to prepared remarks released by the White House. “It’s antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for everyone who’s willing to work for it, a place where prosperity doesn’t trickle down from the top, but grows outward from the heart of the middle class.”

Obama will call the GOP proposal a “prescription for decline,” according to the remarks, and argue it would gut the middle class.

Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, shot back at Obama after the speech excerpts were released, saying “we all thought” he “would be better than this.”

“He had potential, making his leadership failures so disappointing,” Ryan tweeted.

Read More at The Hill. By Amie Parnes.

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore Creative Commons

President Barack Obama’s uncle has been granted a hardship driver’s license by the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles just a week after he lost the right to drive for 45 days in a deal in a drunken driving case.

The license granted Monday allows 67-year-old Onyango (ohn-YAHN’-goh) Obama to drive from noon to midnight to get to work as manager of a Framingham liquor store.

A Registry spokeswoman tells the Boston Herald (https://bit.ly/Hbj3k0) that Obama “met all of the criteria” to qualify for the hardship license, including proof he was enrolled in an alcohol treatment program.

Read More at OfficialWire. By the Associated Press.