March 24, 2015

Arkansas Rep. Thinks Single Moms Need A 'Contraceptive Incentive'

A Republican lawmaker in Arkansas introduced a bill this month that would create a "contraceptive incentive" for unmarried women on Medicaid who need time to "think about their life decisions that are affecting us as taxpayers," according to a report from RH Reality Check.

State Rep. Kim Hammer's (R) [link:ftp://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/Bills/2015/Public/HB1868.pdf|bill] would allow Medicaid to reimburse single women with one child for a "surgically implanted contraceptive device," such as an intrauterine device, or other form of birth control that would remain effective for five years.

"Often young people make decisions and they get a sense that they don’t want to make that decision again for a while. We need to give them a little bit of a breather to think about their life decisions that are affecting us as taxpayers," Hammer said when he introduced the bill, according to the Arkansas News.

Hammer previously supported a bill that would ban abortion after 20 weeks.

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/arkansas-gop-contraception-poor-women

March 24, 2015

Another Key Republican Refuses To Endorse Cruz For President

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) opted against endorsing Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), a close conservative ally, for president after Cruz announced his candidacy on Monday.

In response to Cruz unveiling his campaign, Lee issued a statement which did not make any mention of Cruz, according to Utah's KSL. It's surprising given how closely associated Lee and Cruz are by both Democrats and conservatives. Most notably, Lee aligned himself with Cruz during the latter's crusade against Obamacare that resulted in a government shutdown in 2013.

"The most important thing for conservatives to focus on in the presidential race is not the candidate we run, but the agenda we run on," Lee said in the statement. "I look forward to seeing how each of the candidates plan to apply conservative principles to reform our dysfunctional federal government and fix our broken status quo."

A senior adviser to Lee, Boyd Matheson, told KSL that even though Cruz hit "some familiar themes" in his speech announcing his candidacy for president, those themes are also being touched on by other likely Republican presidential candidates: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Sen. Rand Paul (KY), and Sen. Marco Rubio (FL). Lee, according to Boyd, doesn't want to make the "fatal mistake" of focusing just on personality without policy.

"I think the American people are just starving for some serious dialogue," Matheson said. "It can't just be style and sizzle and how many standing ovations you can get from a raucous crowd."

more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/mike-lee-not-quickly-endorsing-ted-cruz

March 24, 2015

Ted Cruz: I Started Listening To Country Music Because Of 9/11

Leaving no political stone unturned, newly-declared presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) had a very particular answer on Tuesday when asked about his taste in music.

"You know, music is interesting," he said on CBS "This Morning." "I grew up listening to classic rock, and I'll tell you sort of an odd story."

"My music taste changed on 9/11," he said, followed by a pause.

Co-host Gayle King nodded.

"I actually intellectually find this very curious, but on 9/11, I didn't like how rock music responded," the senator went on. "And country music, collectively, the way they responded, it resonated with me." Cruz did not specify which rock artists "responded" to the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks in a way that led him to switch genres. But he repeated that he's been firmly country ever since.

more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ted-cruz-9-11-taste-in-music

March 24, 2015

Washington Post Columnist Declares Ferguson Is The 'Liberal Benghazi'

Liberals have found an ideological bugaboo on par with Benghazi in the Michael Brown shooting, according to Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen.

"Ferguson has become the liberal Benghazi," Cohen wrote in a column published Monday night. "It is more of a cause than a place, more of an ideological statement than an incident. Ferguson was not the racist murder it was thought to be, and Benghazi was not an incident in which the Obama administration’s incompetence or timidity allowed four Americans to die. The facts argue otherwise."

Cohen wrote that the unarmed black teenager didn't deserve to die. But he suggested that a Justice Department report clearing white police Officer Darren Wilson of civil rights violations in the shooting indicated Wilson could be considered a victim in the shooting, too.

"If Brown was not criminally shot because he was black, then possibly the cop was accused because he was white," Cohen wrote. "Who was the stereotyped individual here?"

The columnist then invoked the heated debate about campus rape to argue that liberals fudge statistics, including statistics on the number of black men killed by police, to agree with their ideology.

more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/richard-cohen-ferguson-is-liberal-benghazi-ok

March 24, 2015

WATCH: Roy Moore says he hopes his battle against same-sex marriage doesn’t kill him

Alabama Supreme Court chief justice Roy Moore headlined an anti-gay marriage rally at the Texas Capitol on Monday, where he claimed that U.S. courts had no right to redefine “what God proposed in Genesis.”

During the “Defense of Texas Marriage Amendment Rally,” which was organized by the Conservative Republicans of Texas, Moore compared the fight against same-sex marriage to the battle of the Alamo. “William Barret Travis from Conecuh County, Alabama, came to draw a line in the sand at the Alamo,” Moore remarked. “He took a stand in the face of an enemy that was far more numerous, but he knew that he had to make a statement for the people of Texas and that he would give his life.”

Moore said he hoped he didn’t have to lay down his own life in his battle against same-sex marriage. “I hope I don’t give my life, but I’m going to tell you this is a very serious matter.”

“There’s today another threat not only in Texas and Alabama, but across our country where state and federal court judges have overruled constitutional amendments passed by the people of those states, and people have just sat by and watched it out of fear of the federal government,” he continued. “But nothing in the Constitution of the United States, nothing in the laws or precedence of the federal courts give federal courts any authority over domestic policy of family and marriage in the state of Texas, in the state of Alabama, or anywhere else.”

Moore complained that more than 30 states had caved to “federal tyranny” by allowing same-sex couples to marry.

-snip-

Full article
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/03/watch-roy-moore-says-he-hopes-his-battle-against-same-sex-marriage-doesnt-kill-him/

March 24, 2015

It Will Never Happen - By Josh Marshall

By JOSH MARSHALL Published MARCH 24, 2015, 9:06 AM EDT

There are few people I do not take seriously in politics. Or to put it more specifically, there are few people I fully discount in the context of national elections. Ted Cruz is one of those people. By contrast, I think it is highly unlikely that Rand Paul can make it in the GOP primaries, let alone a national election. There are so many intra-party disputes, so many iffy stories lurking in the background for him and his father and a lot more. But there are enough unexpected and cross cutting aspects to Paul that I can't be sure. Always important, many people who don't agree with anything Paul says find him somehow appealing. Cruz is entirely different. It is hard to think of someone who has been accorded such press attention as a presidential contender while being so certain to go down to defeat. It is extremely unlikely that Cruz could ever win the GOP nomination. And as certain as one can ever be in this fallen world that he cannot win a national election.

This is for three reasons.

Starting with most obvious, Cruz would not survive first contact with the range of blue states and swing states where a Republican must compete. Some say, they didn't think he had a chance in Texas either. Well, Texas, as they say, is a whole 'nother country. Both on the issues and temperamentally Cruz embodies the caricature of Republicans which nominees studiously work to dismantle in the general election phase of the campaign. Indeed, Cruz would run so poorly in many blue "reach" states that he would probably bring down a non-trivial congressional Republicans because he is so toxic to non-right wing ideologues. He won't win a national election. Not at the top of the ticket.

Second, no one wins the presidency who does not come off as a good guy, someone you would like, to a majority of the population. The one possible exception is Richard Nixon, though a significant part of his 1968 success was combating this problem. Lots of people hated Clinton and Bush and now Obama too. But most people liked them. Likable guys, not, in a word, assholes. People who come off like assholes don't get elected president. From college and law school to the Senate and seemingly everywhere in between, Cruz has found small groups of admirers while convincing the vast majority of people as a consummate asshole.

This isn't just me sounding off; it's not trash talk. This is a really basic dynamic of presidential elections. There were plenty of Democrats who thought W was an entitled jerk. Most of the population did not feel that way. Many republicans felt Clinton was a slippery charlatan. But even many of them found it difficult to resist his charm. Indeed, that was one of the reasons they hated him.

more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/will-never-happen

March 24, 2015

Indiana Gov. Pence Poised To Sign Yet Another Controversial Anti-Gay Bill

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) is expected to sign into law a controversial "religious freedom bill" that would protect business owners from having to serve same-sex couples.

On Monday the Republican-controlled Indiana state House of Representatives passed the measure in a vote of 63-31, almost totally on party lines according to The Indianapolis Star.

Five Republicans sided with 26 Democrats in opposing the legislation. That vote follows the Indiana state Senate approving a very similar legislation in February. The bill was amended in the House, and returns to the Senate to be voted on again. If it passes, as it seems likely, the bill will then go to Pence for a signature or veto, according to Indiana's WISHTV. Pence has said he will sign the bill into law.

The Senate bill blocks state and local governments in Indiana from "substantially burdening" a person practicing their religion unless the government in question proves that it has both "a compelling interest," in the words of the Star, and is taking the least restrictive route.

Indiana has been a hotbed over the same-sex marriage issue. In 2013, an unusual alliance of corporate giants headquartered in Indiana and run by a Republican operative formed to fight efforts by state lawmakers to increase restrictions on gay marriage in the state.

more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/pence-indiana-religious-freedom-bill

March 24, 2015

5 Ways Ted Cruz Will Drive The GOP 2016 Field To The Right

LYNCHBURG, Va. — Ted Cruz's widely anticipated announcement here on Monday that he'll run for president is guaranteed to spook his fellow Republican hopefuls.

Not because he's necessarily better positioned to win the 2016 nomination than others such as Jeb Bush and Scott Walker. Rather, he has a unique appeal to the hard-core conservative base that produces ample votes in GOP primaries, and he has a knack for portraying solidly conservative Republicans as establishment hacks and squishes.

Where Cruz stands out is not his ideological principles — he shares common beliefs with many of his rivals — but his scorched-earth tactics in service of those principles, and his proclivity for painting fellow Republicans with tactical disagreements as capitulators.

Here are five issues that Cruz emphasized in his kickoff speech to a crowd of thousands at the evangelical Liberty University, all of which could drive a scare into his Republican adversaries, who may feel compelled to tilt rightward to fend him off.

1. REPEAL Every Word Of Obamacare!

-snip-

2. No More LAWLESSNESS On Immigration!

-snip-

3. ABOLISH The IRS!

-snip-

4. Uphold The SANCTITY Of Traditional Marriage!


5. REPEAL Every Word Of Common Core!

-snip-

Full article:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/ted-cruz-drive-gop-field-right

March 24, 2015

TRADITIONAL VALUES? Russia Reaches Out to the Wingnuts of the World

Anna Nemtsova

The weekend conference in St. Petersburg suggests the emptiness of the Kremlin’s ideology, which really is nothing more than with Putin or against him.

MOSCOW—The St. Petersburg Holiday Inn hotel would seem a curious place to expose the feeble ideological core of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. But a cramped conference room crowded with the flotsam and jetsam of right-wing fringe groups in Europe and the United States showed this weekend just how low the Kremlin is inclined to go.

The unifying theme was defense of traditional values and the invited guests had several points of agreement with their Russian hosts: They judged people by their race and sexual orientation, blaming “modernism” for destroying traditional values, including Christianity; they hated homosexual marriages and called for same-sex families to be stripped of any right to have children. Politically and ideologically they trended toward, well, fascism.

Now, remember that the constant drumbeat of Putinesque propaganda about the Russian-backed war in Ukraine emphasizes the “fascist” and even the “Nazi” character of the government in Kiev. The boilerplate justification for Russian annexation of Crimea and support for the rebels in the eastern provinces is that something had to be done to protect them from those right-wing monsters of the Maidan uprising who are backed by the European Union.

Yet on Sunday, leaders of 11 European far-right parties and at least one infamous American nut-job gathered at the Holiday Inn for what was called the “International Russian Conservative Forum.”

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/24/russia-reaches-out-to-the-wingnuts-of-the-world.html

March 24, 2015

Phone Call Threatens Obama’s Niece

Source: TDB/USA Today

Authorities tightened security at the Princeton-Maryland NCAA tournament women’s basketball game Monday night, after the University of Maryland’s athletic department received a phone call threatening the life of President Obama’s niece. In the eight-minute voicemail, a woman said a man driving on campus with a Glock handgun was directly connected to the appearance of Princeton freshman Leslie Robinson, the daughter of Michelle Obama’s brother. Robinson was not notified of the threat, but undercover security officers were called in while Secret Service officers were also in the area for Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, according a person who was not authorized to speak publicly because of security issues. President Obama had attended Saturday’s game between Princeton and Wisconsin-Green Bay.

Read it at USA Today

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Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2015/03/24/phone-call-threatens-obama-s-niece.html