Tag Archives: Topic: White House

Washington Post: And a recent independent poll showed Obama running just seven points ahead of Wolfe in the southern Arkansas 4th district, which covers one-quarter of the state.

CBS: To date, Log Cabin Republicans have not made a decision as to who to endorse for the general election. An automatic endorsement from the group for the GOP nominee is not a slam dunk, as the group has deferred from endorsing candidates in the past.

Demetrius Minor at Townhall: On Saturday, May 19, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) officially came out and declared their support for same-sex marriage. According to USA TODAY, the organization saw the issue has comparable to civil rights. Ironically, this stance fails to comply with a large sector of the African-American population . . .

CBSNews (includes video): The spat between Catholic leaders and the Obama administration over its contraception policies is heating up again, with one of the nation’s most prominent Catholic leaders charging that the White House is “strangling” the church over the matter . . . “We’re like, wait a minute, when did the government get in the business of defining for us the extent of our ministry,” Dolan said.

WhiteHouse.gov: Today, President Obama nominated Thomas M. Durkin to serve on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

Gary McCaleb at Townhall: When President Obama prepared to repeal the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy in July 2011, defenders of marriage and religious freedom warned that the repeal would open Pandora’s Box. Military chaplains even sought congressional action to protect their rights of conscience. The predominant concern was that the President’s actions would usher in attempts to redefine marriage on military installations, which would, in turn, force chaplains to perform the ceremonies for same-sex couples in uniform . . . in the months since the repeal, it turns out the concerns were well-founded.

Gateway Pundit reports and links to earlier reports.

San Francisco Chronicle: In fact, when he said the federal government should leave marriage to the states, he may have signaled that he’s staying out of the case.

Hawaii News Now reports.

Wall Street Journal: On Sunday, the Hawaii attorney general’s office said information Mr. Bennett provided “did not meet the requirements under Hawaii law” and the state “invited him to provide additional legal authority.”

Washington Post: He added that Hawaii officials had responded with a request of its own, asking Bennett to cite the state laws authorizing him to make such a request. Bennett said his office responded via e-mail and that he has not heard back from Hawaii officials for two months.
“All they’ve got to do is email me back saying ‘yes’ and it’s over,” he said. “But they haven’t for eight weeks, and I’m just stunned that they’re making this so hard.”

MetroWeekly: Today, the Obama administration announced that it has finalized regulations implementing the Prison Rape Elimination Act. According to an executive summary provided to members of the media and a conference call held with reporters, the regulations include provisions relating to “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and gender nonconforming inmates” — a development a leading LGBT advocate calls one of the most important LGBT advancements in the administration.

Maggie Gallagher at Townhall: Just how bad a blunder was President Obama’s forced gay marriage endorsement?

ABC on Yahoo: “This was nothing more than a fact checking error by me–an agency assistant at the time,” Goderich wrote in an emailed statement to Yahoo News. “There was never any information given to us by Obama in any of his correspondence or other communications suggesting in any way that he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii. I hope you can communicate to your readers that this was a simple mistake and nothing more.”

WorldNetDaily: Secretary of State Ken Bennett had promised to ask Hawaii officials for verification of Obama’s documentation, vowing that if answers are not forthcoming, Obama’s name will not be on the ballot.

Breitbart: According to archive.org, a website that caches websites on a regular basis, the Dystel.com website – the official website for Dystel & Goderich, Obama’s literary agents – was using the Barack Obama “born in Kenya” language until April 2007, just two months after then-Senator Obama declared his campaign for the presidency.

Breitbart: Breitbart News has obtained a promotional booklet produced in 1991 by Barack Obama’s then-literary agency, Acton & Dystel, which touts Obama as “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.”

Lanny Davis at Fox News
: But after he took his stand, a few seconds later during the interview Obama added: “I continue to believe that this is an issue that is going to be worked out at the local level, because historically, this has not been a federal issue, what’s recognized as marriage.”

One News Now: William Owens, Sr. is founder and president of the Coalition of African-American Pastors, a group whose goal is to promote and support Christ-centered values in the culture. The CAAP is appalled that radical homosexual activists have managed to hijack the civil rights movement

CNSNews: The Obama administration “strongly objects” to provisions in a House defense authorization bill that would prohibit the use of military property for same-sex “marriage or marriage-like” ceremonies, and protect military chaplains from negative repercussions for refusing to act against their consciences, as, for example, in being ordered to perform a same-sex marriage ceremony.

Baptist Press: “Everybody thought they were taking a neutral stance. They did not indicate they were going to actively attack its constitutionality,” Dale Schowengerdt, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, told Baptist Press. ADF, a Christian legal group, has worked to defend the law . . . Technically, the Justice Department is involved only in lawsuits that challenge Section 3 of DOMA — the section that prevents the federal government from recognizing gay “marriage.” But the legal arguments the Justice Department is making easily could be applied to all of DOMA, including the section that protects states, Schowengerdt said. President Obama, meanwhile, is supporting a bill in Congress that would overturn all of DOMA.

Ruth Marcus at the Washington Post points out some obvious problems with the President’s “evolving” position.

The Hill: President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) clashed during a White House meeting on Wednesday, with the Speaker telling the president that he was “not going to allow a debt ceiling increase without doing something serious about the debt,” Boehner’s office said.

Alan Sears at National Review: Therefore, while President Obama’s announcement may charge up the portion of his base to which he hoped to appeal, it does nothing to change the facts of the matter at hand. And those facts say a clear majority of Americans believe marriage should remain what it is and what it always has been, “a union between one man and one woman.”

Mike McManus at the Baltimore Sun: Barack Obama made himself a one-term president last week by telling ABC, “I think that same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

Jonathan Adler reports on the current state of nominations at the Volokh Conspiracy.

Fox News (includes video): President Obama openly spoke of repealing the Defense of Marriage Act at a fundraiser Monday, as he defended his personal view that gay couples should have the right to marry.

Eric C. Redmond at Baptist Press: Your recent expression of your understanding of ‘marriage’ is troubling to us. There are no tenets that can be identified as Christian that allow for anyone to view homosexuality as acceptable. The Christian faith holds to the Bible as the truth, for it has given ample evidence of being the very words of God to man. It is the Bible that reveals marriage to be a union between a man and a woman; it is the Bible that reveals all homosexual activity to be sinful. Therefore we would reject your so-called Christian understanding of same-sex marriage as uninformed and false.

Reuters: President Barack Obama’s show of support for gay marriage has inflamed political passions but has not given him a bump in popularity, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Tuesday.

Religion Clause Blog: CNN reported yesterday that the Obama re-election campaign is hiring a staffer from the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships to be the campaign’s religious outreach director.

Thomas Haine at Public Discourse: He was a reluctant bigot, his supporters could even say, but now he has sincerely seen the light (and so, he seems to imply, should we). But if we focus on the timeline of the last few years, any nice conversion story becomes patently absurd.

WorldNetDaily: WND previously reported the attacks on Arpaio suggested White House coordination in an effort to remove from him from office or discredit him before his investigation uncovers more about Obama’s past.

James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal: But in reading the coverage of Obama’s same-sex marriage announcement last week, we’ve been struck by how much even news reporters seem to have given up evenhandedness to propagandize on behalf of one side of a divisive social issue. The most interesting aspect of this propaganda is that it seeks to deliver two contrary messages: that Obama’s declaration was a great act of courage and that it entails no political risk.

Washington Times: “I think the president this past week took six or seven states he carried in 2008 and put them in play with this one ill-conceived position that he’s taken,” American Values President Gary Bauer said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

NY Times: About two hours after declaring his support for same-sex marriage last week, President Obama gathered eight or so African-American ministers on a conference call to explain himself. He had struggled with the decision, he said, but had come to believe it was the right one.

LA Times: Both President Obama’s campaign and gay activists reject the idea that his endorsement of same-sex marriage was tied to fundraising. But there’s no doubt that the community’s influence has broadened.

ABC (Jim Campbell appears in the video) (5/9/12): But Jim Campbell with the Alliance Defense Fund doesn’t see it that way. For the organization fighting to keep marriage between a man and a woman, President Obama’s comment was a big surprise. “It is really surprising because in the past President Obama has so firmly spoken about how fatherless homes harm children in society, yet today’s statement is a contradiction that would create even more fatherless and motherless homes,” Campbell said.

Byron Babione at Townhall: And because North Carolina is the 31st state to implement such a constitutional-grade protection, President Obama’s announcement simply proves how out of sync he is with the desires and convictions of the American people.

Yahoo News: It won’t be nearly as controversial as Time magazine’s breastfeeding cover, but Newsweek’s May 21 issue declares Barack Obama the country’s “first gay president.”

Human Events: After regaling a group of environmentalists last week on military initiatives to pursue biofuels and prepare for climate change, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta advanced another tenet of a far-left military agenda Wednesday when he appeared at a forum to push for ratification of the United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty. The treaty would create an international regime of law to dictate actions and activities on and in the oceans

Weekly Standard: But what this might actually mean in terms of policy is a little murkier. Perhaps most pressing is the issue of a so-called “nondiscrimination executive order” that gay-rights groups have been pushing. The president has refused—and continues to refuse—to sign it.

Janathan Adler at The Volokh Conspiracy: Yet if DOMA is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause, then how could any state law barring recognition of same-sex marriages survive constitutional scrutiny? In other words, while the President says he believes that states should be allowed to reach “different conclusions at different times” on the question of same-sex marriage, the administration’s legal position is that a state’s refusal to treat opposite-sex and same-sex couples alike is unconstitutional. So while the President may say he’d like to leave this question to the states, that’s an option his administration has already taken off the table.

Washington Times: Steve Aden, a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund, pointed to several cases in which courts upheld the ability of states to choose to whom they will award funds. “These states stand on solid legal footing,” he said. “What the Obama administration is doing is a good job of blowing a lot of smoke and raising a lot of confusion about the legality of these bills.”

Alan E. Sears at National Review Online: Until the last few years, humanity was united on the purpose and the goodness of marriage. That is still largely the case, but unfortunately, well-funded cultural and political elites, including the ones attacking marriage today, are attempting to monopolize the cultural conversation. It’s a conversation in which we who recognize the truth about marriage and want to protect marriage — as the people of North Carolina just did — will continue to engage.

Baptist Press: Jim Campbell, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund — which defends traditional marriage laws — said Obama’s announcement could negatively impact families. “The president has spoken eloquently about how fatherless homes often hurt children and society,” Campbell said. “Today’s statement is a tragic contradiction that promotes the creation of even more fatherless and motherless homes.”

AP: President Barack Obama’s announcement Wednesday that he supports gay marriage boosted the hopes of gay rights groups around the world that other leaders will follow his example.

Ryan T. Anderson and Thomas Messner at the Heritage Foundation: Sure, when running for Senate in 2004, Obama said that “marriage is between a man and a woman.” And when campaigning for the presidency in 2008, he restated that view and also claimed he did “not support gay marriage.” The truth, however, is that President Obama has repeatedly done and said things that directly undermine marriage as one man and one woman.

Ryan T. Anderson, Robert P. George & Sherif Girgis at National Review: At least President Obama is not dissembling anymore about his views on marriage. And even though we consider his support of redefining marriage a deep error, he has done the nation a favor by revealing the truth about his position. So did the vice president, days earlier, when he opined about “the simple proposition” that “this is all about” — “what all marriages, at their root, are about.” That is, the administration has created a long-awaited and much-needed platform for a national discussion of the core issue in the debate: What is marriage? Consider two competing views:

Julie Pace One News Now (AP): Jim Campbell, litigation staff counsel with Alliance Defense Fund, sees obvious contradiction in the president’s announcement today. “This shows that the Obama administration doesn’t understand the public purpose of marriage. Marriage — the lifelong, faithful union of one man and one woman — is the building block of a thriving society. It’s not something that politicians should attempt to redefine for political purposes. “The president has spoken eloquently about how fatherless homes often hurt children and society. Today’s statement is a tragic contradiction that promotes the creation of even more fatherless and motherless homes.

Lisa Leff at Mercury News (AP): The Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal organization that is defending Proposition 8 in court, said Wednesday that the president’s position “shows that the Obama administration doesn’t understand the public purpose of marriage.” “Marriage—the lifelong, faithful union of one man and one woman—is the building block of a thriving society. It’s not something that politicians should attempt to redefine for political purposes,” staff counsel Jim Campbell said.

LA Times: An anti-gay marriage group, Alliance Defense Fund, released a statement saying Obama “doesn’t understand the public purpose of marriage.” “Marriage — the lifelong, faithful union of one man and one woman — is the building block of a thriving society,” said litigation staff counsel Jim Campbell. “It’s not something that politicians should attempt to redefine for political purposes. The president has spoken eloquently about how fatherless homes often hurt children and society. Today’s statement is a tragic contradiction that promotes the creation of even more fatherless and motherless homes.”

Penney Young Nance at Fox News: A recent national survey, commissioned by the Alliance Defense Fund and completed by Public Opinion Strategies, revealed that 62 percent of Americans believe “marriage should be defined only as a union between one man and one woman.” Again, every time the American people have had a chance to vote, they vote to uphold the traditional definition of marriage.

Washington Times: Religious conservatives also were critical, with Jim Campbell, litigation staff counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, saying the announcement “shows that the Obama administration doesn’t understand the public purpose of marriage. Marriage — the lifelong, faithful union of one man and one woman — is the building block of a thriving society.”

Christian Institute: Religious liberty group the Alliance Defense Fund said marriage is not “something that politicians should attempt to redefine for political purposes”.

AZFamily.com (includes video): Valley attorney Jim Campbell from the Alliance Defense Fund told 3TV he thinks this will shape up to be a big issue leading up to the election. “The American people are concerned about the issue of marriage,” Campbell said. “They want it to remain the union of a man and a woman.” The Alliance Defense Fund fights against gay marriage nationwide. We asked if Obama’s announcement in support of gay couples will make that fight more difficult. “This is one politician’s view about what he seemingly wants to redefine as marriage. But Americans across the country want to protect the union between man and woman.”

Tulsa World: Oklahoma is one of 30 states that has a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, according to an Alliance Defense Fund website that advocates for a ban on same-sex marriages.

USCCB: However, we cannot be silent in the face of words or actions that would undermine the institution of marriage, the very cornerstone of our society. The people of this country, especially our children, deserve better.

The Hill: President Obama on Wednesday endorsed gay marriage, becoming the first U.S. president to voice support for same sex couples to legally marry.

CNN’s Responses to Obama’s marriage announcement includes this: Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus: “Because our children’s future is best preserved within the traditional understanding of marriage, we call for a constitutional amendment that fully protects marriage as a union …

The president has spoken eloquently about how fatherless homes often hurt children and society. Today’s statement is a tragic contradiction that promotes the creation of even more fatherless and motherless homes.

Examiner.com: A labor union with strong ties to President Obama is helping make the Occupy Wall Street movement a more permanent fixture in the nation’s capital, moving Occupy DC into office space the group can use to organize and grow through the presidential election.

Huffington Post:President Obama is expected to address gay marriage in an exclusive ABC News interview with Robin Roberts on Wednesday.

LA Times: Speaking from his office in Washington, D.C., Human Rights Campaign communications director Fred Sainz said the president’s expected comments could be the end to his “evolving” views on the issue. “I think the term ‘evolving’ implies constant motion with an end. I think at some point, the evolution has to end,” Sainz said. “I’m hopeful that it will be today.”

Washington Post: A review of Obama’s top bundlers–those who have brought in $500,000 or more for the campaign–shows that about one in six publicly identify themselves as gay. His overall list of bundlers also includes a number of gay couples who have wed in jurisdictions where same-sex marriage was legal.

San Francisco Chronicle: White House press secretary Jay Carney just told reporters to watch for President Obama to clarify his “evolving” position on same sex marriage . . . Look for a statement no later than Obama’s New York City fundraiser with Ricky Martin May 14, targeting the gay community . . .

Examiner.com: On May 1st, President Barack Obama signed a new Executive Order which opens the door for the United States to give up economic and environmental sovereignty through the promotion of a single international regulatory system.

AP: Education Secretary Arne Duncan, a member of President Barack Obama’s Cabinet, says he supports gay marriage.

San Francisco Chronicle: As President Obama struggles with the politics of gay issues at home, his administration is drawing cheers from human rights groups for its commitment to gay rights around the globe.

Christian Post: “Look, I just think that the good news is that as more and more Americans come to understand what this is all about, it’s a simple proposition: Who do you love? Who do you love? And will you be loyal to the person you love? And that’s what people are finding out, is what all marriages at their root are about, whether they’re marriages of lesbians or gay men or heterosexuals,” Biden said.

National Journal: Vice President Joe Biden stopped short on Sunday of pledging to legalize gay marriage should President Obama win a second term. “That’s what I believe. I am vice president of the United States of America, the president sets the policy,” he said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “I am absolutely comfortable with men marrying men, women marrying women.”

John Yoo at the Wall Street Journal (via Google): The Obama administration refused to defend me against the lawsuit filed for José Padilla. Now even the liberal Ninth Circuit agrees the suit was frivolous.

Pat Buchanan at

The Hill: President Obama leads presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney in the critical battleground state of Virginia, according to a Washington Post poll released on Thursday. Obama leads Romney 51 percent to 44 percent, according to the poll.

AP: One source of frustration is Obama’s stance on same-sex marriage – he has yet to endorse it even though he advocates equal rights for gay and lesbian couples.

LifeNews: Leading pro-life advocates rallied this morning at the White House for forced abortion opponent Chen Guangcheng, who may be close to heading to the United States if China approves an application for him to study here. At least one pro-life advocate was arrested.

The Hill: Observers said the U.S. and China will both be looking for a way out of the diplomatic fight that allows both sides to save face . . . Willson said he expected the situation to quickly be resolved given the two nations’ mutual dependence. The two countries are tied at the hip economically – China is America’s second-largest trading partner and is the largest single holder of U.S. government debt – and China’s support is needed to get anything done in the UN.