Tag Archives: Topic: Politics

Damon Linker at The Week: Two-thirds of Americans want to uphold Roe v. Wade. But only 13 percent believe abortion is morally acceptable.

Minneapolis Star Tribune: Republican state Sen. Branden Petersen is preparing to become a co-sponsor of a bill to legalize same-sex marriage in Minnesota.

The Washington Post reports and quotes John Huntsman.

Discovery.com: The study, which examined the brain activity of 35 men and 47 women registered as either Democrat or Republican, found no difference in the amount of risk people of each political persuasion were willing to take on during a gambling game. But the way the brain processed risk worked differently between the groups, with Republicans showing more activity in an area linked with reward, fear and risky decisions and Democrats showing more activity in a spot related to processing emotion and internal body cues.

USA Today: In a move that could signal the end of a key restriction on political giving, the Supreme Court announced Tuesday it will consider a case challenging the limit on how much individuals can donate directly to federal candidates and political parties.

American Federation for Children:For the past four years, supporters of educational choice have wondered why the Obama Administration has so vigorously opposed providing children in low-income families with access to more educational options. Right here in Washington, D.C., the highly successful D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) has given thousands of children hope for a better future and yet the Obama Administration has consistently opposed it. In fact, despite signing the FY 2011 budget agreement which included a five-year reauthorization of the program, the President’s subsequent budget proposals zeroed out funding for the program.

Albany Watch: He’s not planning to separate the abortion piece in order to allow the Legislature to approve other, non-contentious measures. The so-called “Women’s Equality Act” would include not only a bill to codify federal abortion rights in state law, but also legislation enhancing pay equity, cracking down on sex trafficking and ending pregnancy discrimination.

LifeNews: The political arm of the Planned Parenthood abortion business has launched an attack on pro-life Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli.

Quad-City Times: Given the continued presence of Gronstal and Democratic control of the Senate, Republican leaders said they’re focused on other matters, such as Iowa’s education and property tax system, and not gay marriage.

Christian Institute: Former Government minister Tim Loughton was sacked because of his opposition to redefining marriage, according to reports.

The HIll: Iowa’s 2014 Senate race is fast becoming an early battleground in the Republican family feud over recruiting “electable” candidates, with an early GOP front-runner scoffing Tuesday at suggestions he wouldn’t survive a general election.

NY Times: Kevin L. James, a conservative talk show host running for mayor of Los Angeles, was sitting in his campaign office recently pondering which was his bigger obstacle to victory: being openly Republican, or being openly gay.

Jordan Lorence appeared on Wallbuilders Live to discuss the Louie Giglio situation. | MP3 audio 11:20 mins

Christian Concern: The Conservative Chairmen behind yesterday’s letter delivery to Downing Street have reacted with dismay and disbelief to renewed attempts by the Party machinery to create the impression that there is broad support for the Bill within the Conservative Party.

NY Times: The biggest donors in the Republican Party are financing a new group to recruit seasoned candidates and protect Senate incumbents from challenges by far-right conservatives and Tea Party enthusiasts who Republican leaders worry could complicate the party’s efforts to win control of the Senate.

National Journal: Public opinion is moving away from social conservatives, but the issue is deeply polarizing.

National Review: “The world has changed beneath us,” Gilmore says. “Shrillness and extreme language are driving away the voters who could help us build a majority. We’re not speaking to them as reasonable conservatives. Republicans have to decide if they want to govern or play ideological parlor games.” “Young people today have a more tolerant, hands-off perspective,” he says. “Their libertarian philosophy, for example, has to be taken into consideration. Yet we keep projecting anger at the gay community and the Hispanic community, even though they’re open to many of our ideas.”

BuzzFeed: Originally formed to repeal DOMA in Congress, LGBT rights organizations are building a coalition to fight for “securing the freedom to marry nationwide.”

Christian Post: A U.S. District Court judge ruled that a major pro-life organization is not guilty of defamation against a politician who sued the group two years earlier over losing a re-election bid.

Bob Vander Plaats at the Family Leader: I ask you the reader, is this really what politics is about? Are we really supposed to abandon the core values and principles that have served us well throughout civilization so we can win elections? And, when we do moderate, and if we do win elections, what did we win by abandoning our core beliefs?

LifeNews: The Republican Party is now officially on record as supporting the de-funding of the taxpayer-supported Planned Parenthood abortion business. On Friday, top GOP officials at the RNC approved a measure supporting efforts to revoke its taxpayer funding.

Wall Street Journal

LA Times: GOP lawmakers in several battleground states have proposed a proportional method for awarding votes, rather than the current winner-take-all system. But some within the party object.

The Hill: Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) will retire from the Senate at the end of 2014, the five-term senator said Saturday.

AP: Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss said Friday he will not seek a third term next year, expressing deep frustration with Washington gridlock that he doesn’t see changing in a divided government.

The Hill: Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) has a strong lead over possible Democratic contenders in the race to succeed Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), according to a new poll.

Daily Herald: A newly elected suburban state senator is rounding up fellow Illinois Republican officials to try to oust the chair of the beleaguered party over his support for legalizing same-sex marriage. Sugar Grove dairy magnate and state Sen. Jim Oberweis emailed several fellow state central committeemen several days ago about organizing a special meeting to remove Illinois GOP chairman Pat Brady of St. Charles, the Daily Herald has learned.

National Review Bench Memos: Hearings in Kansas over judicial selection reform continued yesterday, as two members of Kansas’s judicial nominating commission testified for the House Judiciary Committee. They attested to what Bench Memos readers already know—that the commission masks partisan politics in the name of “merit.”

Ramesh Ponnuru at National Review: The biggest political problems for pro-lifers remain what they have been for many years: They are in coalition with economic conservatives who have not found a way to translate their principles into a popular program, and they have not found a way to form a coalition with blacks and Hispanics who agree with them. Solving or mitigating those problems will require a massive effort not limited to the pro-life movement alone. In the meantime, pro-life politicians cannot afford to make avoidable mistakes.

Bill Donohue at Newsmax: Hollywood was not given a pass because of the delicacy of the Constitution: there are First Amendment considerations in trimming the rights of the mentally ill, and there are Second Amendment rights involved in gun control. Hollywood was given a pass because it greases Obama.

Washington Post: When President Obama said Monday that “our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law,” he made history by becoming the first president to advocate for gay rights in an inaugural address.

LifeSiteNews: By promoting one of the most expansive abortion bills in American history, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has opened a civil war on two fronts: with his church and with elements of his own party.

Business Week: Taking a less-hostile tone on abortion and gay rights and reducing the number of primary debates are among the steps the Republican Party could make to become more competitive in national elections, said Henry Barbour, a party leader. The nephew of former Mississippi governor and one-time Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour . . .

LifeSiteNews: Coalition leaders, including the Rev. Walter Hoye, met last week in Washington to discuss their strategy for the coming year. Rev. Hoye told LifeSiteNews that conventional pro-life tactics aimed at white voters were “developed for the courtroom, not the culture” and don’t work well with the black community.

Lawrence M. Vance at Future of Freedom Foundation: According to Planned Parenthood’s latest report, the organization received $542.4 million in “government health services grants and reimbursements,” including “payments from Medicaid managed care plans.” Yet the report also states that Planned Parenthood performed 333,964 abortions in 2011. But Planned Parenthood could not have received a dime of taxpayer money unless Republicans in the House — who play the pro-life card at every election — voted for the funding. They were, after all, in the majority.

Angelo M. Codevilla at The American Spectator (7/16/2010): The only serious opposition to this arrogant Ruling Party is coming not from feckless Republicans but from what might be called the Country Party — and its vision is revolutionary. Our special Summer Issue cover story.

National Journal: Which statement comes closest to your political views on gay marriage?
REPUBLICANS (99 VOTES)
My party should support it: 27%
My party should oppose it: 11%
My party should avoid the issue: 48%
Other: 14%

NY Daily News: Responding to Gov. Cuomo’s renewed call for passage of the Reproductive Health Act — which would strengthen the legal right to an abortion in New York — Timothy Cardinal Dolan raised an excellent question: Whatever happened to the important goal — advanced by President Bill Clinton and embraced by many on the pro-choice side — of seeking to make abortion “safe, legal and rare”?

Family Research Council: Shuns of Anarchy
As he learned yesterday, liberals are no longer satisfied by the church’s silence on homosexuality. They will accept nothing less than the active embrace and celebration of what the Bible calls sin–or use totalitarian tactics to get it.

Albert Mohler: The Giglio Imbroglio — The Public Inauguration of a New Moral McCarthyism

Jordan Lorence at Speak Up Movement: Leftist bloggers successfully convinced officials for President Obama’s Inauguration to pressure Pastor Louie Giglio of Passion City Church in Atlanta to withdraw from praying the benediction at the ceremony January 21.

The Hill: Senate Democratic leaders have sent a letter to President Obama pledging their support if he raises the nation’s $16.4 trillion debt ceiling unilaterally in the face of Republican resistance.

Washington Post: A conservative megachurch pastor was wiped from the inaugural program Thursday after a strongly anti-homosexuality sermon he gave in the 1990s surfaced, evidence of how fast Americans’ views on gays and lesbians are shifting and the political pitfalls for a liberal president attempting to reach out to religious conservatives.

Washington Post: Michael Bloomberg, America’s most prominent and deep-pocketed advocate for gun control, would rather rehabilitate Republicans than oust them.

SCOTUS Blog: The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a plea by the national Republican party to free it from a three-decades-old court order that limits its right to challenge voters’ qualifications.

Cass Sunstein at Bloomberg: In recent years, those who study federal courts have started to test these claims by analyzing many thousands of judicial votes. Armed with actual data, the researchers are finding that much of the conventional wisdom is wrong, or at least way off.

Gary Bauer at Human Events: More and more political analysts and weak-kneed politicians are advising the historically pro-life Republican Party to abandon its pro-life stance for political gain. My first response is that if you cannot trust a party on the value of defending human life, how can you trust it on issues like marginal tax rates. Still, consider this: A common but bogus attack on the GOP is that it rejects science. Notice I said bogus. Isn’t it ironic that just as science is proving the humanity of the unborn child some in the party of Lincoln are tempted to abandon the most defenseless Americans of all?

CNN: An anti-abortion group will not get a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court on its appeal of federal law designating it as a political nonprofit that must disclose information about its financial donors.

AZ Republic: But a growing atheist lobbying group is taking on the Christian-based center and its well-connected president, Cathi Herrod, and aims to create a higher profile at the Legislature next session. Serah Blain, executive director of the Secular Coalition of Arizona, said the state is the first in the nation to have a full-time legislative lobbyist representing a “non-theistic” organization.

Washington Post: There are any number of reasons for that diminution in authority but here the five big ones.

The Hill: Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) was re-elected Speaker of the House on Thursday after a week of rumors of a possible GOP revolt.

Christian Science Monitor: His appeal added to a bipartisan chorus of calls for immediate action, including from Republican members of Congress and top officials from the affected states who denounced a decision late Tuesday by House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio to pull the relief package from consideratio

Daily Herald: Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady of St. Charles is calling GOP lawmakers asking them to support a proposal to legalize same-sex marriage, he said today.

The Hill: Sen. Jon Tester was helped in his reelection bid by $10.2 million in spending from liberal outside groups, nearly twice as much as that spent by conservatives, according to a report from ProPublica. About $4.2 million of that was “dark money,” funds that come from organizations that are not required by law to disclose their donors.

Washington Post: There’s an asterisk there, though: It’s not entirely clear whether Boehner will be the speaker of the House a month from today. The vote to elect the next speaker is on Jan. 3. To win, you need an absolute majority of the House, not a plurality. Even a hopeless conservative challenge that attracts only a handful of Republican votes could deny Boehner the speakership until a consensus candidate emerged. Tonight’s vote makes that challenge more likely.

Mark Sherman at AP: “The vicious opposition by the left to Bob Bork’s nomination turned what had sometimes been a contentious confirmation process into literally a political campaign,” Meese said Wednesday.

Jeffrey Rosen at the New Republic: My contribution to the epic battle was modest: I helped with research for a speech on the history of the confirmation process, in which Biden argued that the Senate had the duty to scrutinize not only the legal qualifications but also the constitutional views of nominees. This was a controversial proposition at the time; today it has been taken to extremes that neither Biden nor Bork, who died today at 85, could have imagined.

John S. Dickerson at the NY Times: I believe the cultural backlash against evangelical Christianity has less to do with our views — many observant Muslims and Jews, for example, also view homosexual sex as wrong, while Catholics have been at the vanguard of the movement to protect the lives of the unborn — and more to do with our posture. The Scripture calls us “aliens and exiles” (1 Peter 2:11), but American evangelicals have not acted with the humility and homesickness of aliens. The proper response to our sexualized and hedonistic culture is not to chastise, but to “conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that, though they malign you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God” (1 Peter 2:12).

Ryan T. Anderson at Public Discourse: How successful can a “new conversation on marriage” be when its leaders can’t even say what marriage is?

NY Times: Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina has chosen Representative Tim Scott to replace Jim DeMint in the United States Senate, according to three Republican officials. The move will make Mr. Scott the first black senator from the South since the late 19th century.

Bobby Jindal at the Wall Street Journal (via Google):As an unapologetic pro-life Republican, I also believe that every adult (18 years old and over) who wants contraception should be able to purchase it.

The New Civil Rights Movement (includes video): Glenn Beck, who seems to have a tenuous relationship with truth and consistency, after being definitely anti-marriage equality, is now trying to say the GOP should embrace same-sex marriage in order to “have the ultimate big tent” and to expand our own horizon.” But he himself doesn’t believe in full civil marriage equality.

Politico: “I’m personally grateful to Speaker [John] Boehner for being willing to defend the law, but it’s clear GOP elites don’t want to talk about it and want to keep it as quiet as possible,” said Maggie Gallagher, a founder of the National Organization for Marriage and a fellow at the conservative American Principles Project. “That’s so obvious, I don’t see any point in pretending otherwise.”

Ed News: With Michigan teachers unions outraged over the state’s new right-to-work law that allows teachers to work without joining the union, the state’s current teachers are preparing to close down schools in protest.

LifeNews: A conservative GOP congressman announced he will not challenge pro-life House Speaker John Boehner, squelching rumors that the top Republican in Washington will face a contest for his position. The office of Rep. Tom Price’s (R-GA), a pro-life lawmaker from Georgia, told conservative media outlets mid-day today that he will not seek the Speakership in an inter-party fight against Boehner.

Fox News: The allegations mark the second straight day the Tea Party-backed Huelskamp has lashed out at Boehner and other House leaders for perceived punishment when they return next year for another term.

The Hill: The conservative blog Red State, run by the influential political commentator Erick Erickson, is calling on Republicans to depose Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).

The Hill: McConnell met with the House Republican Study Committee last week to warn conservatives in the lower chamber not to sign on to any bipartisan initiative requiring super-PACs to disclose their donors.

CNSNews: According to a recent Gallup poll that asked participants if they have a positive or negative image of socialism, 53 percent of Democrats and “leaning democrats” said they have a positive image while 23 percent of Republicans and “leaning republicans” said their image is positive.

National Review: The senator, he says, hasn’t become a liberal; he merely has talked about tax reform. “I don’t make much of all that chatter,” Perdue says.

The Hill: Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) warned his conference on Wednesday that leaders are “watching” how the rank-and-file vote to determine committee assignments, according to sources in the closed-door meeting.

AP: The interior ministers of Germany’s 16 states unanimously recommended Wednesday pursuing a new ban of the National Democratic Party on allegations it promotes a racist, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic agenda in violation of the country’s constitution.

National Review: Here is what we found: The teacher unions of Hawaii, Oregon, Montana, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and California are exceptionally strong, while those in Mississippi, Virginia, Arkansas, South Carolina, and Arizona are among the weakest. States that require school districts to negotiate with their local unions tended to rate “strong” on our metric — but not always.

PennLive (AP): Republican Rep. Mike Fleck, 39, told The Daily News of Huntingdon County that his personal journey has been a long and difficult process.

Daily Caller: The poll found Hispanics in the conservative camp on social issues in particular. Fifty-one percent said they opposed legalizing gay marriage, compared to just 40 percent who favored legalization. Fifty-six percent called themselves pro-life, while just 33 percent said they were pro-choice.

Politico: And Club for Growth, a longtime small-government group, said Reps. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) and Justin Amash (R-Mich.) were “free of the last remnants of establishment leverage against them” after they were booted from their committees by the House Republican Steering Committee for crossing leadership too often.