Tag Archives: Topic: Politics

Examiner.com: David Pierce, who has been a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives since 2006, was victorious in his Democratic primary for state senate on Sept. 11th and became the first openly gay candidate to be elected to the state senate as a freshman . . . The Victory Fund also celebrated the victory of out gay Rep. David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat, who sealed the nomination for another term for reelection to Congress and two LGBT candidates in Delaware. Andrew Staton and Marie Mayor both took steps in becoming Deleware’s first out LGBT legislators . . .

NY Times: Two Republican state senators who provided pivotal votes to legalize same-sex marriage last year fought opponents to a standstill on Thursday in primary races so close that they will be decided only after absentee ballots are counted.

George Will at Human Events: Fortunately, not everything is up to date in Kansas City. Esther George, president of the regional Federal Reserve Bank here, is refreshingly retrograde regarding what less-circumspect people welcome as the modernizing of the nation’s central bank into a central economic planner. She has concerns, both prudential and philosophical, about the transformation of the Fed in ways that erase the distinction between monetary policy, which is the Fed’s proper business, and fiscal policy, which is inherently political.

Human Events: Now the spigot is open — wide open. QE III is here. And the Fed is about to become a campaign issue, whether it likes it or not. Chairman Ben Bernanke announced Thursday that the Fed would spend $40 billion a month on mortgage-backed securities with no set date to end those purchases.

Business Week: Pennsylvania’s new voter-ID law “impermissibly” violates a fundamental right, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union and 10 citizen-plaintiffs told the state’s Supreme Court.

NY Times: But the specter of those plans — an oft-cited goal of Mayor Rahm Emanuel — hangs heavily over the teachers’ strike. “Even if it’s not explicitly something that we’re bargaining over,” said Jackson Potter, staff coordinator for the Chicago Teachers Union, “everyone knows it’s the elephant in the room.”

LifeNews: More revelations are coming out from the new book Planned Bullyhood, written by Karen Handel, the former vice president for Komen for the Cure. The latest revelation has the head of the Democratic Party pressuring Komen to fund America’s biggest abortion business.

Washington Times: Israel Science and Technology, the national database and directory of science and technology-related websites in Israel, has published an article asserting the long-form birth certificate released by the White House is a forged document.

Charlotte Observer: HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius violated federal law when she made “extemporaneous political remarks” during a February speech to the Human Rights Campaign Gala in Charlotte, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel ruled Wednesday.

New Times: Before State Senator Roy J. McDonald, a Republican, voted last year to legalize same-sex marriage, he told reporters that anyone unhappy with his position could “take the job and shove it.”

Ramesh Ponnuru at National Review: The media, this time the Washington Post, are again tackling the issue of Obama’s opposition, as a state legislator, to a bill protecting infants who survive abortions.

Wall Street Journal: Does President Obama want Israel to bomb Iran before the election? If we had more faith in this Administration’s competence, we’d be tempted to think so.

Rasmussen: The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds McCaskill will 49% support to Akin’s 43%. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate in the contest, and another four percent (4%) are undecided.

The Hill: Mitt Romney on Wednesday stood by a statement issued by his campaign criticizing the Obama administration over its handling of violent protests at American diplomatic missions in the Middle East, saying, “President Obama has demonstrated a lack of clarity as to a foreign policy.

Carrie Severino at National Review: Last Friday the West Virginia Supreme Court stopped Allan Loughry, a candidate for the West Virginia supreme court, from receiving additional public funding — funding that was triggered after the campaign expenditures of Mr. Loughrey’s opponent, Justice Robin Davis, crossed a certain threshold. The court found, in part, that because Mr. Laughrey’s additional public funding could neutralize Justice Davis’s campaign expenditures, the funds would violate Justice Davis’s political speech rights.

Bangor Daily News: Nearly 500 people turned out Monday afternoon at Portland City Hall to join the rally promoted as the official kickoff to the “Yes on 1” campaign. The event took place after the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland organized a series of outreach meetings across the state in an effort to energize voters against the Nov. 6 referendum, which would legalize same-sex marriages in Maine.

NPR: U.S. House candidate Richard Tisei is openly gay. He’s also openly Republican. “You know what, in Massachusetts, it’s a lot easier to be gay than be a Republican,” he says, “as far as trying to get elected to office.”

Gary Bauer at the Human Events: Conservatives often argue that the Democratic Party is in the midst of a clear turn toward European-style socialism. This year’s DNC was the most conspicuous sign yet that the Democratic Party is also pivoting toward post-Christian, European-style secularism. For Obama and the Democratic elite, government has replaced God. The Democratic elite have spent the last decade abandoning God, which is why the faithful will continue to abandon the Democratic Party.

Wall Street Journal: The Planned Parenthood Action Fund is making one of the largest ad buys in its history, buying $3.2 million TV time in the battleground states of Virginia and Ohio, saying Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is bad for women’s health.

Washington Post: First, Margaret Carlson warned the Democrats that their abortion extremism was a problem. Now another Democrat, Cokie Roberts, has stepped forward, trying to explain to Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D) that their party risks alienating a lot of people:

NY Times: The November presidential election, widely expected to rest on a final blitz of advertising and furious campaigning, may also hinge nearly as much on last-minute legal battles over when and how ballots should be cast and counted, particularly if the race remains tight in battleground states.

Washington Post: They say D.C. Republicans ultimately will not stay out of a race so critical to their national prospects — if they are convinced Akin won’t end his campaign.

Religion Clause Blog: The Palm Beach Post reports that Palm Beach County, Florida, Democratic Party Chairman Mark Alan Siegel resigned Friday, two days after making controversial remarks about pro-Israel Christians.

AP: Both men have made the election not just about the economy or even the American Dream, but about America itself. They see a nation pessimistic about itself and nervous about its future, hardly American traits.

DickMorris.com: In a scene right out of a typical authoritarian regime, Fox News reports that “employees at the venerable Gallup polling firm suggested they felt threatened by Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod when he questioned the methodology of a mid-April poll showing Mitt Romney leading the president – according to internal emails published Thursday.”

Alan Sears at American Thinker: What we have in America today, in effect, are two kinds of “exceptionalism.” One is the kind political candidates (conservative ones, at least) like to speak of, that recognizes the unusual blessings and opportunities that, up to now, have always been within reach of those blessed to be raised in this country. And then there is the other kind — the kind that says freedom is for every group “except this one.” Or that “my group deserves exceptional latitude — exceptional tolerance — exceptional indulgence and promotion from the law and culture and community.”

LifeSiteNews: The Reverend Jesse Jackson has said he would have “no problem” performing a same-sex wedding ceremony, “if I was asked to.”

LifeNews: But the leader of one pro-life group says Fluke’s fiction ignores the fact that women are already dying in emergency rooms, but for different reasons — they are dying after failed abortions.

C-FAM: The platform adopted at the Republican National Convention last week specifically names four UN treaties whose ratification it opposes because their “long-range impact on the American family is ominous or unclear”. These treaties are the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), and the Arms Trade Treaty.

Journal Times: Baldwin, 50, was the first openly gay candidate to win election to the House in 1998. She is looking to become the first openly gay candidate elected to the Senate, and the first woman senator from Wisconsin.

The Badger Herald: As same-sex marriage continues to play an important role in national politics this year with Democrats adopting the issue into their platform, senatorial candidate Tammy Baldwin could make history by becoming the first openly gay U.S. Senator

WPRI.com: The political action committee trying to elect state lawmakers who support same-sex marriage is going all-out to defeat Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Michael McCaffrey. But Paul Jabour, the committee’s vice chairman, isn’t getting the same treatment.

Washington Post: Tonight’s speech is Obama’s last chance to take a first step toward accommodation with a country increasingly concerned about his unmasked determination to “transform” what the Founders considered “fundamentals.”

The Video is embedded here on YouTube.

Washington Post: For the casual viewer of the major party political conventions, the ritual presence of religious leaders (who open and close each night’s events with prayer) may be lost. But the candidates and leadership of both parties are aware of the importance of invoking religion at political conventions: two-thirds (67 percent) of voters – including 66 percent of Democrats, 58 percent of independents, and 78 percent of Republicans – say that it’s important for a presidential candidate to have strong religious beliefs.

Glenn Cohen at the Bill of Health Blog: As America’s attention focused on the Republican Convention and the Obama campaign tries to portray a “Republican War on Women” at the Democratic one, last week Mitt Romney tried to clarify his position on abortion, namely: while he is generally against abortion, he would make an exception for cases where the mother has been raped or is the victim of incest. While politically savvy, based on other beliefs Mitt Romney has, this position is hard to defend if not incoherent. Here is why . . .

Religion Clause Blog: In an interesting decision last month in In re Application of John Doe, (MN Campg. Fin. & Pub. Discl. Bd., Aug. 7, 2012), the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board granted an exemption to an employee of a Catholic organization who had contributed $600 to an organization that opposes theMarriage Amendment that will appear on the November ballot.

Dallas Morning News: Texas has now spent more than $2 million defending its law to require photo identification to vote and its redrawing of political boundaries, officials said after federal judges sided against the state in both cases last week

Bloomberg: Why has the party removed the sentence “Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare” from its platform? It was in the 2004 document but not in 2008’s or this year’s. Can’t Democrats just throw a crumb to the many millions who are pro-choice but not pro-abortion?

The Church Report: Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson (R) leads Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) by 9 points, according to a new poll from Marquette University.

The Hill (includes video): Democrats on Wednesday reinstated language in their party platform recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, but only after an unclear vote in which as many delegates appeared to oppose the change as support it.

The Hill: “It is a fundamental part of this platform; we hear it in every single speech, from every official. This is a pivotal moment in American history, and it is overwhelming to experience,” he said.

AP: Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan says he supports prayer in public schools if approved by states.

Charmaine Yoest at National Review The Corner: My favorite line of the night? “I know this president. And I can tell you that he cares deeply about the next generation of women in this country; his daughters, all of our daughters.” The irony of abortion supporters professing their concern for the next generation never gets old.

In a smashing victory for free speech, the full Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals today preliminarily enjoined Minnesota law imposing political-committee-like burdens.

Seattle Times: Preserve Marriage Washington has amended its instructions for churches collecting money to help overturn the state’s same-sex marriage law, but campaign-finance officials say the language still doesn’t comply with the law.

Steve Aden at LifeNews: All this effort, all this money, all lined up to perpetuate and protect the culture of death. Planned Parenthood needs to explain where their portion of the money is coming from. Is it part of the nearly half-a-billion dollars the federal government gave them for clinic operations last year? If it is, then we have a situation where a leftist administration is giving federal taxpayer dollars to a leftist organization that, in turn, is using that money to keep the administration in power. Seems questionable, doesn’t it?

LifeNews reports and carries video of the vote

AP: Democrats have changed their convention platform to add a mention of God and declare that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. AP: God Out Of Democratic Platform Ryan tells Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” the change is not in …

The Hill: Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee (I), a former Republican, believes the Democratic party’s embrace of same-sex marriage will boost Democrats in swing states.

James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal: Perhaps the reason other journalists are so deferential toward the “fact checkers” is that these fact checkers, unlike the traditional ones, don’t check the facts of journalists but of politicians. By and large, they aren’t actually checking facts but making and asserting judgments about the veracity of politicians’ arguments. The quality of their work is generally quite poor.

Washington Free Beacon: Several pro-Israel sections of the 2008 Democratic Party platform have been removed from the 2012 platform—on Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees, and Hamas.

Politico: Democrats think they’ve figured out how to win the abortion debate: Don’t make it about abortion. Starting Tuesday, the Democratic convention here will feature speeches from Planned Parenthood Action Fund President Cecile Richards, NARAL President Nancy Keenan and Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke, who became a flashpoint in the debate over requiring Catholic institutions to pay for birth control.

CBN (includes video): “The mayor’s office texted me and said, ‘We regret to inform but we ask that you not send those letters, and not engage in ‘Adopt a Delegation,’ because your views on women are contrary to the convention,’” David Benham, Charlotte 714, said.

Dale Carpenter at the Volokh Conspiracy: In Minnesota, pro- and anti-gay marriage activists are fighting over political campaign disclosure laws, though this time the usual roles are reversed. On August 17, the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board ruled that the group working to defeat a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage does not have to disclose the name of a Catholic contributor to the “No” campaign. ”John Doe,” who works for a Catholic organization in Minnesota, gave $600 to Minnesotans United for All Families, the main group opposing the amendment.

The Hill: Morality in Media (MIM), a non-profit that states its mission is to curb obscenity and “uphold standards of decency in media,” applauded the GOP’s pledge to clamp down on pornography in the platform that was approved at the party’s convention this past week in Tampa, Fla. “Current laws on all forms of pornography and obscenity need to be vigorously enforced,” the platform said under a plank titled “Making the Internet Family Friendly.” Patrick Trueman, president of Morality in Media, welcomed the adoption of that line in the platform, which added on to wording in previous versions that was limited to voicing opposition to child pornography.

NOLA.com: Federal District Court Judge Susie Morgan ruled Saturday that Justice Bernette Johnson has the seniority needed to succeed Catherine “Kitty” Kimball as chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court when Kimball retires early next year. In a decision issued just before 7 p.m., Morgan ruled that “any tenure accrued by Justice Johnson between Nov. 16, 1994 and October 7, 2000, is to be credited to her for all purposes under Louisiana law,” which would include determining whether she is the second most senior justice after Chief Justice Kimball.

Robert George at the Wall Street Journal (via Google): If, as the Obama-Biden campaign alleges, there is a “war on women,” Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, is its field marshal. If opposition to same-sex marriage is “bigotry,” as many on the left insist, then Cardinal Dolan—as the most prominent defender of marriage as the union of husband and wife—is the country’s leading bigot.

Ramesh Ponnuru at National Review: The Democrats are reportedly going to highlight their support of legal abortion this week. They seem to think it’s a political winner. It’s a marked change from eight years ago, when many Democrats expressed grave anxiety about the political damage the party’s position on abortion was doing it.

Seattle Times: “By doing this, the Democratic Party is basically telling voters in places like North Carolina and Florida that they’re a bunch of bigots,” said Sacramento, Calif., consultant Frank Schubert, the strategist behind California’s Proposition 8 and similar campaigns to bar gay unions in four states where marriage is on the ballot in November

LifeNews: Democrats at the 2012 Democratic National Convention are set to approve a platform today that is unambiguously pro-abortion and opposes any effort whatsoever to stop any abortions. The platform also calls on forcing Americans to pay for abortions at taxpayer expense.

AP: There’s a platform endorsing same-sex marriage, a roster of speakers that includes three gay members of Congress, and a record number of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender delegates hailing from all 50 states – 486 in all, more than 8 percent of the total.

CBN: God’s name has been removed from the Democratic National Committee platform. This is the paragraph that was in the 2008 platform . . .

Christian Science Monitor: In last night’s acceptance speech, Mitt Romney sketched out his personal biography and delivered an effective brief on why we shouldn’t reelect President Obama. But, oddly, when it came to taxes he was nearly silent.

LifeSiteNews: Romney had not previously included maternal “health,” an exception pro-abortion activists have interpreted so broadly that it essentially justifies abortion under any circumstances.

The Volokh Conspiracy reports and links to the ruling.

KIMATV.com: Money and politics very often go hand in hand, sometimes a little too closely. That’s why the state is taking a closer look at the Yakima Diocese and how it’s supporting Preserve Marriage Washington.

Seattle Post Intelligencer: “I believe in gay marriage,” Koch told Ken Vogel of Politico outside a reception in Tampa.

Charlotte Observer: About 200 Muslims gathered for a traditional Jumah prayer Friday afternoon in Marshall Park, kicking off a week of religious events in Charlotte tied to the Democratic National Convention . . . A Christian group set up on a sidewalk beside the park turned on a loud sound system as the Muslims tested their system. They held up a sign: “Democrats attack morality, family, children.” “We’re glad that (the Muslims) are here,” said the Rev. Phillip “Flip” Benham of Concord-based Operation Save America, an anti-abortion group. “If the devil is going to throw a party, it’s imperative that the church of Jesus Christ show up.” Organizers of “Jumah at the 2012 DNC” had expected up to 20,000 Muslims from across the country to pray on the first day of a three-day cultural event. But only a couple of hundred unfolded chairs to sit in the park’s shade.

Lifenews: “As president, I will protect the sanctity of life. I will honor the institution of marriage. And I will guarantee America’s first liberty: the freedom of religion,” he said.

At the Wall Street Journal.

LifeNews carries it here.

Baptist Press: Missouri Baptist leaders and pastors have signed a document affirming their personal support for embattled Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin, saying they accept his apology and appreciate his “long-standing commitment” to social conservative causes.

Blog of the Legal Times: The former senator told the dozens of lawyers gathered that they have “a lot of work to do to make sure this election is not stolen,” saying that President Obama will “stop at nothing” to get the votes he needs to win. Bond said he “has a feeling” that the DOJ won’t crack down on election irregularities.