CAN THIS MAN POSSIBLY BE THE MOST STUPID TO EVER LIVE?

Louie Gohmert, who is possibly the most stupid person to ever hold an office in U.S. government -awkwardly invoked the Old Testament in order to condemn Planned Parenthood during a House Judiciary Committee meeting on Wednesday.

“[I] was reading about a woman that came complaining to the Prophet. She was in a city that was under siege. And she complained that another woman had talked her into a deal where the first time, they would boil her little baby and eat the child,” he said. “And then after that, they would boil the second woman’s child and eat that child. Well, let’s face it: this hearing we’ve heard over and over, ‘If it’s to save lives, it’s OK.’ I could not believe how reprehensible that was, how immoral.”

The Tea Party lawmaker was apparently referring to 2 Kings 6:29, which states that “So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him: and she hath hid her son.”




The meeting was called following the release of a series of videos by an anti-abortion group, the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) claiming that it showed Planned Parenthood officials saying they made a profit off of fetal tissue donations. The agency was not represented in the list of identified speakers during the hearing.

Gohmert did not mention that the CMP videos were quickly debunked following their release. He also neglected to mention that both the federal Health and Human Services Department and investigators in five states have determined that Planned Parenthood did not violate any regulations in separate investigations.

Congrats Louie, you are today’s most stupid human of the week. Enjoy numbnuts!

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Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

HYPOCRITICAL OATHER KIM DAVIES RELEASED WITH CONDITIONS

U.S. District Judge David Bunning issued an order Tuesday afternoon releasing Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis from jail in Kentucky. She had been held in contempt for defying Bunning’s order requiring her to do her job of issuing marriage certificates.

During proceedings on Thursday, Davis was offered to avoid jail if she allowed her deputies to issue the marriage licenses. She refused, and on Friday they began issuing them. The release order requires that Davis “shall not interfere in any way, directly or indirectly, with the efforts of her deputy clerks to issue marriage licenses to all legally eligible couples.” If she refuses — as she seemed to promise to do last week — she would again be held in contempt.

The lawyers for the deputies issuing licenses were also ordered to file a “Status Report” every 14 days to confirm their compliance with the order. They are forbidden from following Davis’ “no marriage licenses” policy should she try to enforce it again.

Davis is being released just as a rally in her support, featuring Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz and numerous anti-LGBT organizations, is set to commence outside the correctional facility where she’s been held since Thursday. The Republican presidential candidates had planned to visit her in jail, but she was released before they had the chance.

It should be noted that Davis' release from jail might not last very long. Her lawyers have indicated that she will, in fact, halt the issuing of marriage licenses in direct violation of the order.

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Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

WING-NUT HUCKABEE IF ELECTED WOULD DEFY COURT AS WELL

Wing-Nut Mike Huckabee said on Sunday that U.S. citizens only have to follow court orders if judges get “it right,” and that he would follow his conscience as president even if it meant the type of jail time Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis is serving.

Speaking with host George Stephanopolous, the GOP presidential candidate claimed court orders only become binding upon citizens when state or federal legislatures take the ruling and codify it into law.

Huckabee — who has hitched his fading star of a campaign to the fortunes of Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who is currently sitting in jail for contempt after refusing marriage licenses to same-sex couples — explained that there is no specific law Davis should have been following.

“George, can you cite for me what statute Kim Davis would be required follow in order to issue a same-sex marriage license in Kentucky when her state specifically says, by 75 percent of the voters, that marriage means one man, one woman?” Huckabee asked. “Can you cite the statute at the federal or state level that she’s supposed to follow? Even the very form that she fills out specifically lists a male and a female. Does she have the authority just to scratch that out and create her own?”

“Doesn’t she have to the duty to obey a legal order from the court?” Stephanopolous pressed.

“Well, you obey it if it’s right. So I go back to my question. Is slavery the law of the land?” Huckabee attempted as way of an explanation. “Should it have been the law of the land because Dred Scott said so? Was that a correct decision? Should the courts have been irrevocably followed on that? Should Lincoln have been put in jail? Because he ignored it.”

Turning to presidents following their conscience, Stephanopolous played a clip of President John F. Kennedy in 1960 stating: “When if the time should ever come and I do not concede any conflict to be remotely possible, when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office.”



“Would you make that same statement in your candidacy for president?” the host asked Huckabee.

“I can’t see any circumstance in which I would be required to violate my conscience and — and the law,” Huckabee conceded before adding, “And if so, I think maybe there is a point at which you say either I’ll resign or put me in jail.”

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DIPSHIT PALIN WANTS TO BE TRUMPS ENERGY SECRETARY

THIS IDIOT WANTS TO BE TRUMPS ENERGY SECRETARY

Snowbillie Sarah Palin says that if Donald Trump becomes president of the United States, she wants to be his Secretary of Energy.

As Palin was speaking with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday, the conversation shifted to a discussion of businessman and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who recently said that he would “love” to have her in his cabinet if he won the White House. When asked which position she would want in a hypothetical Trump administration, Palin was quick to answer: Energy Secretary.

“I think a lot about the Department of Energy, because energy is my baby: oil and gas and minerals, those things that God has dumped on this part of the Earth for mankind’s use instead of us relying on unfriendly foreign nations,” she said, using a conservative theological argument to justify wanton use of fossil fuels — an argument that has been debunked by none other than Pope Francis.

Palin went on to explain that her theoretical tenure as Energy Secretary would be short, primarily because she would immediately disband the entire department.

“If I were head of [the Department of Energy], I’d get rid of it,” she said. “And I’d let the states start having more control over the lands that are within their boundaries and the people who are affected by the developments within their states. If I were in charge of that, it would be a short-term job, but it would be really great to have someone who knows energy and is pro-responsible development to be in charge.”

Palin isn’t alone in her desire to disband the Department of Energy, a crucial component of the federal government established by President Jimmy Carter that oversees, among other things, the safety and security of America’s nuclear weapons. Several Republicans have called for its abolishment in the past, and current Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry has said in the past that he wanted to close it down, although he famously forgot the name of it during a debate in 2012.

Every time this idiots opens her mouth - she is a mockery to everything human. God help us all if this dipshit ever holds a Presidential cabinet office.

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Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

WHITE CHIC WHO GOT BLACK MANS SPERM IN ERROR LOSES IN COURT

An Ohio judge has tossed a lawsuit filed by a white woman against a sperm bank that accidentally provided her with the sperm of a black man after she and her partner specifically requested sperm from a Caucasian man with blue eyes so their baby would look like them.

According to the Washington Post, Jennifer Cramblett filed suit against Midwest Sperm Bank in 2014 when her mixed-race daughter Payton was 2-years-old, saying the clerical error had caused her and her partner, Amanda Zinkon, “stress, pain, suffering and medical expenses.”

Stating that she loves her daughter, Cramblett asserted in her suit that her daughter would grow up feeling like an “outcast,” and that she and her partner have “limited cultural competency” around African-Americans.

“Getting a young daughter’s hair cut is not particularly stressful for most mothers, but to Jennifer it is not a routine matter, because Payton has hair typical of an African American girl,” the lawsuit reads. “To get a decent cut, Jennifer must travel to a black neighborhood, far from where she lives, where she is obviously different in appearance, and not overtly welcome.”

“Jennifer’s stress and anxiety intensify when she envisions Payton entering an all-white school,” the lawsuit continued. “Ironically, Jennifer and Amanda moved to Uniontown from racially diverse Akron, because the schools were better and to be closer to family.”

Cramblett also asserted that her own “unconsciously insensitive” family members might have trouble accepting her daughter, now 3-years-old.

DuPage County judge Ronald Sutter threw out couple’s lawsuit, agreeing with attorneys for the sperm bank who argued that “breach of warranty” and “wrongful birth” claims lacked legal merit in the case. The judge advised that the couple could refile under a negligence claim.

According to the sperm bank, which maintains handwritten records, the couple were supposed to receive sperm from donor No. 380, a white man; instead, they were given sperm from donor No. 330, a black man. The sperm bank apologized in a letter stating “we are so very sorry,” and issued the couple a partial refund.

The original lawsuit asked for at least $50,000 in damages.

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COP LIES ABOUT BEING SHOT AT

Days after Lt. Joe Gliniewicz was shot and killed in Illinois, setting off a widely publicized manhunt, a Massachusetts officer was fired Thursday for lying about being shot at and causing an hours-long manhunt the day before.

Before his termination on Thursday, the unidentified officer, who was on his way to becoming a full-time member of the Massachusetts State Police (MSP), claimed he crashed his car because a white male fired several shots at him in Millis, Massachusetts. Residents of the town were on high alert after the incident, and schools were shut down for safety precautions. But a ballistics report conducted after the alleged shooting concluded the bullets discovered in the officer’s vehicle actually belonged to him. Investigators are also looking into whether or not the officer torched his vehicle as well.

The former officer now faces criminal charges. His motive for lying has not been determined.

The fabricated story comes in the midst of media hysteria over the “war on cops.” In response to a string of officer murders (eight have been killed in 10 days), pundits have argued that “incendiary, anti-police rhetoric” has inspired a wave of cop killings. Fox News has gone so far as to call Black Lives Matter organizers — whose mission is to put an end to violence against black bodies that is largely perpetrated by police — a murder movement and hate group. It has also zeroed in on anti-police acts, such as Arby’s employees’ refusal to serve an officer in Florida.

Police officers have also said they are too concerned about public backlash to fulfill their duties, resulting in the so-called “Ferguson Effect.” The theory, which gains momentum every time an officer is killed, says there is an uptick in violent crime because officers are too weary to do their jobs.

In reality, while officer deaths are tragic and should be cause for concern, the number of police fatalities pales in comparison to the number of people killed by police every year. More than 1,000 people were killed by officers in 2014, compared to 126 officers who were killed in the line of duty. Fifty of them were shot — up from a record-low number of firearm deaths the year before, but still below the decade average. In fact, the number of officers killed by firearms annually has experienced a downward trend since the 1970s, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.

This year, 83 officers have died in the line of duty — 24 by gunfire. Motives for the killings in the last ten days have yet to be determined, and so far, no one has cited Black Lives Matter as the driving force.

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HUCKABEE SUGGESTS THAT KIM DAVIS AND LINCOLN HAVE THINGS IN COMMOM

KIM DAVIS, THE EPITOME OF TODAY'S CHRISTAIN

Mahatma Gandhi — 'I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.'

President Abraham Lincoln has something in common with Kim Davis, according to Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee: They both nobly ignored the U.S. Supreme Court.

Davis, the now-infamous Kentucky county clerk, is refusing to issue marriage licenses to a same-sex couples, despite the Supreme Court’s recent ruling giving gay couples the constitutional right to wed. On Thursday, Davis was held in contempt of court for her refusal, and taken into custody. (Huckabee immediately condemned the decision, deeming it a “criminalization of Christianity.”)

Appearing on MSNBC this morning, Huckabee said that’s just like Abraham Lincoln, who was not in favor of the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision which held that African Americans were not full citizens.

“Look, you would have hated Lincoln, because he disregarded the Dred Scott 1857 decision that said black people aren’t fully human,” Huckabee said when host Joe Scarborough questioned him about his support of Davis. “[Lincoln] disregarded [Dred Scott] because he knew it was not operative, that it was not logical.”

Aside from Huckabee’s equation of marriage equality to a decision that held that black people are “so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect,” his comments also indicated his aversion to the Supreme Court in general. Echoing sentiments he’s expressed before, the former Arkansas governor said the high court should not be able to impose that ruling on individual states unless they’ve passed their own legislation echoing the ruling.

“When you say [marriage equality is] the law of the land, can you quote the statute that has been passed by the people’s elected representatives? No,” Huckabee said. “The only law she’s following is the Kentucky law which, by constitutional amendment, defines marriage as between a man and a woman.”

Scarborough, however, wasn’t buying it, noting that Supreme Court rulings supersede state laws. In other words, even though Kentucky’s constitution states that marriage is between a man and a woman - that became null and void when the Supreme Court ruled for federal marriage equality.

“Whether I agree with you or not on states being able to regulate this or not,” Scarborough said, “anything that Kentucky passed becomes irrelevant as soon as the Supreme Court of the U.S. makes a constitutional determination, right?”

“That’s not — no,” Huckabee answered. “That’s not true.”

Mike Huckabee, you are today’s moronic imbecile of the day, congrats!

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Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

“BLUE KOOL-AID”

Prior to yesterdays trial start of six officers accused in the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, outspoken former Baltimore officer and anti-police brutality activist Michael A. Wood, Jr. discussed the need for fundamental changes in American policing.

The officers are facing a slew of charges, including second degree murder and manslaughter in the death of Gray, 25, who died with massive injuries he sustained in a police van in April. His death led to widespread protests and civil unrest which was quelled when the indictments were announced.

Wood, who retired with a medical injury, has since spoken out about his time as an 11-year Baltimore PD officer and his observations about what’s broken in the criminal justice system.

In an interview with the Real News Network, Wood said the very basis of police work is wrong. Police are measured by the number of arrests they make, not by their success in deescalating and resolving situations peacefully.

“So, you have the metric in policing, which is arrest,” he said. “So every officer is judged upon their arrests. So you don’t get credit for deescalating a situation. Say it takes an hour to deescalate a situation but you could have moved on in 5 minutes by making an arrest, well then the easy route is that you’re going to get credit for the arrest… so you may as well do it.”

Wood said there are no “official” arrest quotas, but officers that don’t make enough arrests are seen as not working hard enough, he said. As a supervisor, Wood expected his officers to make about 10 arrests a month.

“Certainly that’s part of the problem, I was pushing them for arrests,” he said. About 90 percent of what he did as an officer was “go chase drug arrests.”

He was “brainwashed” by the “blue Kool-Aid,” but began to break out of the mindset doing surveillance. That’s when the “us versus them” mentality broke down, because Wood said he was watching the people he was targeting having normal, human lives.

“We planted a tree of criminal justice in this evil soil, so everything we get out of it is going to be bad as well,” he said. “It’s the proverbial fruit of a poisonous tree, because we’re starting from a bad foundation.”

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Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

KIM DAVIS, KENTUCKY CLERK SUFFERS FROM SABS

KENTUCKY CLERK AND SABS SUFFERER KIM DAVIS

Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who has staged a weeks-long campaign of resistance to marriage equality, came under fire from an unexpected source on Tuesday — the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Davis, who suffers from the hypocritical Christian disease - which allows ignoramuses like Davis to invoke SABS [Selective Application of the Bible Syndrome] while on the job. Davis a three time divorcee; on her fourth marriage, two kids out of wedlock, and once again, refused yesterday to issue marriage licenses to a same-sex couple despite a recent order from the Supreme Court denying her request for a temporary stay enabling her to ignore the Constitution. Just a few hours later, a federal judge ordered her to appear in court this Thursday, where she is likely to be held in contempt.

RELATED: Dan Savage destroys thrice-divorced Kim Davis: ‘This is about someone hypocritically cashing in’

According to Ryan Anderson, Heritage’s most visible anti-gay voice, Davis is indeed wrong to refuse to issue marriage licenses altogether in order to spite same-sex couples who wish to marry. “The citizens of Rowan County have a right to receive in a timely and efficient manner the various government provisions—including licenses—to which they are entitled,” Anderson writes for one of Heritage’s websites.

He adds, in an argument that closely maps criticisms of the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision, that “saying your religion requires your entire office to stop issuing marriage licenses to everyone . . . cannot be reasonably accommodated without placing undue hardships on the citizens unable to receive their licenses in their county and forced to drive to another.”

Anderson’s solicitude for the Constitution, it should be noted, only goes so far. He devotes much of his piece denouncing Davis to an alternative proposal that permits individual state officials to recuse from issuing licenses to same-sex couples while also “mak[ing] clear that no one can be denied a marriage license.”

This proposal is unconstitutional. As the Supreme Court explained in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Constitution “does not permit the State to bar same-sex couples from marriage on the same terms as accorded to couples of the opposite sex.” So if an opposite-sex couple will be served by whichever clerk happens to be on duty when they arrive seeking a marriage license, a same-sex couple must be allowed to obtain a license on the same terms.

Nevertheless, the fact that this prominent anti-gay luminary believes that Davis has gone off the deep end - is a sign of just how off the reservation this lunatic is.

Kim Davis, you are today’s asshat and worst person of the world. Congrats numbnuts!

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Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

FEDERAL JUDGE RICHARD LEON DROPS THE BALL

In a significant escalation of the birth control wars, a federal judge held on Monday that employers who object to contraception can refuse to include birth control coverage in their employees’ health plan — even if their objection to birth control has nothing whatsoever to do with religion.

Judge Richard Leon is a George W. Bush appointee with a history of handing down conservative opinions. His opinion in March for Life v. Burwell is no exception. In it, Leon holds that the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, an anti-abortion group which claims to be non-religious, may refuse to comply with federal rules requiring employers to include certain forms of contraception, even though their objections to birth control are entirely secular.

Leon’s reasoning on this issue is, frankly, hard to follow. It is even more difficult to summarize in writing. In essence, however, Leon appears to object to the government’s decision to exempt churches and other inherently religious organizations from the birth control rules without also extending this exemption to secular employers because such a rule discriminates against secular employers.

The problem with this argument is that the Supreme Court has explicitly held that when the government “acts with the proper purpose of lifting a regulation that burdens the exercise of religion” there is “no reason to require that the exemption come packaged with benefits to secular entities.”

In an apparent attempt to work around this Supreme Court decision, Leon digs up two obscure sentences published by the federal government which note that “houses of worship and their integrated auxiliaries that object to contraceptive coverage on religious grounds are more likely than other employers” to employ people who share the same view. From this statement, however, Leon deduces that the government’s real purpose in exempting certain religious employers from the birth control rules was actually to protect “a moral philosophy about the sanctity of life.” It is an extraordinary leap of logic that, even if it did reach a sound conclusion, does not obviously lead to Leon’s ultimate legal conclusion that a religious exemption must come packaged with benefits to secular entities. And yet Leon reaches this conclusion, regardless.

A separate section of Leon’s opinion sides with two March for Life employees who claim that they should be allowed to purchase an employer-provided plan that does not offer birth control coverage because they have religious objection to “participating in a health insurance plan that covers” certain forms of contraception. In a post-Hobby Lobby world, this is not a frivolous claim — although it is far from a slam dunk. In any event, the appropriate remedy if these two plaintiffs ultimately prevail is to grant them — and only them — the right to purchase a plan that does not otherwise comply with federal law.

Leon’s first conclusion that secular employers may exempt themselves from a federal rule they wish not to follow, however, goes far beyond what the Supreme Court said in Hobby Lobby.

[cross-posted from thinkprogress]

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GEORGIA JUDGE SETS WIFE BEATER FREE BECAUSE…….

Domingo Santiago plead guilty to “gagging his wife, binding her wrists together, and beating her with a cord.” Yet a Georgia judge tossed out the state’s prosecution of Santiago after a series of questions that seemed much more concerned with whether Santiago’s wife would gain some advantage from her abusive husband’s conviction than with enforcing the law of his state.

During Santiago’s trial, South Georgia Circuit Superior Court Chief Judge A. Wallace Cato discovered that Santiago “beat his wife after learning that she was having an affair,” and that the couple had since reconciled. Judge Cato also asked whether Santiago and his wife “get in bed together and get it on?” When they said that they do, indeed, have sex, the judge complained that the prosecution was “a little ridiculous” and asked Santiago if he thought that his wife would hold a conviction “over his head” in order to “make you do what she says.”

After Santiago responded that, yes, he did think his wife would hold it over his head if he was convicted for tying her up and beating her, Judge Cato dismissed the case.

Last week, an appeals court reinstated this prosecution, holding that Cato exceeded his lawful role by making a decision that rested with the prosecutor. In reversing Cato, the appeals court also criticized his conduct at the trial. “We consider the trial court’s questions to Santiago and his wife about her adultery, their sex life, and whether she would hold a conviction over his head highly inappropriate and irrelevant,” Judge Yvette Miller wrote for a three-judge panel. “By dismissing the case without any legal basis and over the State’s objection, the trial court impermissibly abridged the State’s right to prosecute Santiago.”

Judge Cato’s decision to focus on Santiago and his wife’s post-abuse reconciliation ignored the fraught emotions that often lead victims of abuse to return to their abusers. According to one scholarly paper, “victims of domestic violence are more prone than other crime victims to recant or refuse to cooperate after initially providing information to police.” Indeed, “evidence suggests that 80 to 85 percent of battered women will recant at some point.”

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STAFF WRITER

Chris Christie, speaking at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire on Saturday, compared legal immigrants to FedEx packages, arguing they should be tracked continuously by the government. Christie even promised to bring in FedEx founder Fred Smith to set up the system.

“At any moment, FedEx can tell you where that package is. It’s on the truck. It’s at the station. It’s on the airplane. Yet we let people come to this country with visas, and the minute they come in, we lose track of them,” Christie said.

FedEx tracks its packages so efficiently by affixing a bar code to every package and scanning them at regular intervals.

Martin O’Malley’s campaign criticized the remarks as “dehumanizing.”

Donald Trump has taken a commanding lead in the Republican presidential primary with an extremely hard line on immigration. The other candidates have scrambled to follow his lead — embracing the slur “anchor babies,” rejecting birthright citizenship and supporting Trump’s proposal for a wall across the entire southern border.

Christie previously supported a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. When he started running for President, he reversed his position. His remarks today appear to be an effort to further toughen up his rhetoric on the issue.



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STAFF WRITER

MAHER TAKES ON FEMALE VIAGRA, RELIGION AND SEXUAL FREEDOM

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Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

THIRD TIME NOT A CHARM

A gay couple in Kentucky was denied a marriage license for a third time by a defiant county clerk.

James Yates and William Smith Jr. went Thursday morning to the Rowan County Courthouse to seek a license to be married but found that County Clerk Kim Davis still was refusing to issue them one as she fights federal court orders, reported the Courier-Journal.

The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday slapped down the latest challenge filed by Davis, with help and encouragement from the conservative Liberty Counsel, ruling that county clerks are obligated to follow the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges and not their own personal beliefs.

VIDEO BELOW IS OF SECOND DENIAL




Yates and Smith, who have attempted to obtain a marriage license each time the clerk is dealt a legal setback, were told by an apologetic deputy clerk that Davis believes a previous stay granted by a judge remains in effect until Aug. 31 despite the appeals court ruling.

“Sorry, guys,” the deputy clerk says in video recorded during the attempt.

“It’s just making us want to press more,” Yates said. “She can’t get away with this.”

The couple said they would return next week and ask for a marriage license a fourth time.

Davis has twice denied David Moore and David Ermold, another gay couple from Rowan County, a marriage license.

Another defiant county clerk, from Casey County, suggested this week he was willing to be jailed or killed for refusing to follow the law.

“If it takes it, I will go to jail over — if it takes my life, I will die for because I believe I owe that to the people that fought so I can have the freedom that I have,” said Casey Davis, the Casey County clerk.
 

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FATHER OF SLAIN JOURNALIST MAKES PLEA TO WING NUT CABLE SHOW CALLING FOR GUN CONTROL

Fighting back tears, the father of one the journalists killed on live TV Wednesday morning made an impassioned plea for gun control on Fox News. Andy Parker, father of WDBJ reporter Alison Parker, told Megyn Kelly that “we’ve got to do something about crazy people getting guns.”

“My mission in life… I’m going to do something to shame legislatures into doing something about closing loopholes and background checks and making sure crazy people don’t get guns,” Parker said.

Her father’s comments were reinforced by her boyfriend, Chris Hurst. “Clearly something went wrong here between him leaving our station and being able to purchase a gun and commit a premeditated act,” Hurst told Kelly.

Bullshit Mountains’ following story featuring radical right wing-nut job Dana Loesch - who rejected calls for gun control and blamed the murder on elements of society that “don’t teach a respect for life,” like Planned Parenthood.

Loesch lost her sheen many years ago after her exit from the offices of the dead Breitbart. But in typical Loesch fashion, more diarrhea of the mouth and constipation of the brain.

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Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

“KEEP YOUR DAUGHTERS HOME IN THE KITCHEN TO PREVENT FRATERNITY RAPES”…..

…Says the Fox News host of Outnumbere. Harris Faulkner suggested on Tuesday that daughters could be put into convents or kept “home in the kitchen” to prevent them from getting sexually assaulted at college fraternities.

After the Sigma Nu fraternity suspended their Old Dominion Chapter this week for hanging banners warning parents that daughters should be “ready for a good time,” Fox News host Harris Faulkner said that it was a sign that she needed to get her daughters “ready for the real world.”

“These guys are teenagers and in their twenties and they were probably drunk when they were writing the signs,” Faulkner explained. “And they’re just having a good time.”

Co-host Andrea Tantaros predicted that college women would go to the fraternity in spite of the signs if there were “hot boys.”

“Ray Rice in the NFL, how many women were still wearing his jersey after we all had seen the video and knew what was going on?” Faulkner recalled.

“The signs are disgusting and the university has to take a stand on this because of what’s going on with rape culture,” Tantaros continued. “The university has to stand up and say, ‘If something happens at that house, we cannot be responsible.’ But not even that, it’s PR. They have to protect the brand of Old Dominion University.”

According to co-host Kennedy Montgomery, the signs were “a backlash that these guys are feeling about being told that they are predators. And oftentimes, you see the pendulum swing the opposite way.”

“I hope they are focusing on keeping the women safe,” Faulkner said.

“My daughters are going to a convent,” Montgomery volunteered.

“I’m going to keep them home in the kitchen,” Faulkner agreed.

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Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

TAXING THE RICH TRUMP STYLE

On Sunday, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump struck a populist tone when talking about hedge funds and the taxes they pay. “They’re paying nothing and it’s ridiculous,” he told John Dickerson on Face the Nation. “They make a fortune, they pay no tax, its ridiculous okay.”

He went on to say they “are getting away with murder” and that “they have to pay tax.” Without specifying exactly how he would change that, he added that he wants to lower tax rates for middle-class Americans. “The middle class is the one, they’re getting absolutely destroyed.”





The money made by hedge fund managers is taxed at significantly lower rates than ordinary income made through wages: capital gains, or investment returns, are subject to a top tax rate of 23.8 percent, compared to a 39.6 percent payroll tax. The benefit of the lower tax rate accrues almost entirely to the wealthy — nearly 70 percent of the money goes to the top 1 percent of income earners, but just 7 percent goes to the bottom 80 percent.

Economists have said that the lower tax rate for capital gains income is “by far” the greatest contributor to growing income inequality, which harms the middle class.

But Trump has not always stuck up for the less well off in his tax reform proposals.

As recently as 2011, in his book Time to Get Tough, he actually called for lowering the tax rate on capital gains income as well as dividends. He also called for eliminating the estate tax — which is already a massive giveaway to the wealthiest Americans — and getting rid of the corporate tax rate altogether.

He also proposed changing income taxes so that income over $1 million would only ever be subject to a 15 percent rate, while taxing lower incomes at 1, 5 or 10 percent, depending on the bracket. As Richard Phillips of Citizens for Tax Justice has written of the plan, “the lower tax rate structure would provide the wealthy with huge tax cuts.” Those plus the changes to the corporate tax rate, capital gains and dividends, and the estate tax would create a “multi-trillion dollar hole” in tax revenues, he added.

More recently, Trump has floated other tax reform ideas that could constitute a big benefit for the best off. In an interview with Time Magazine, he voiced support for a flat tax or fair tax. Different details of a flat tax would produce different results, but an analysis of one such plan put forward by Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) found it would raise taxes for Americans at the bottom of the income scale by $102 to $462, while reducing the tax burden for those making more than $1 million a year by about a half million dollars.

In the same interview, he said that he wants to take on corporate tax inversions, where American companies merge with foreign-based ones in countries with lower tax rates so they can move their headquarters to avoid paying higher taxes. But he said he wants to bring companies back by letting them return to the U.S. by either paying nothing or something like a 10 percent tax rate on their overseas profits. Such a move, called a repatriation tax holiday, has already been tried in 2004. At that time, firms mostly used the repatriated profits not to invest in American jobs but to inflate their own stock prices while laying off large numbers of workers.


[cross-posted from thinkprogress]

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TRUMP LIKE MOST TEABAGGERS, NO PLAN FOR HIS LUNACY

Donald Trump has made a hard-line stance on undocumented immigrants a hallmark of his campaign. On ABC’s This Week, he was pressed repeated on his pledge to immediately deport every undocumented immigrant. Although credible sources estimate there are around 11 million such immigrants, Trump claimed there were as many as 30 million.

But pressed repeatedly on how he would accomplish this monumental feat, Trump had no answers.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So if there’s no idea, how are you going to round them all up?
Where are you going to get the money, where are you going to get the forces?
Exactly how are you going to do it?
What are the specifics here?
TRUMP: George, it’s called management. And the first thing we have to do is secure the border. But it’s called management. And we’ll get people back in, the really good ones, we’re going to expedite it so they get back in, so they can at least come in legally.
But we have to do it…
STEPHANOPOULOS: You keep declaring how you’re going to do it…
TRUMP: It’s management.
STEPHANOPOULOS: — but you don’t say…
TRUMP: We don’t…
STEPHANOPOULOS: — how.
TRUMP: Excuse me, George?
STEPHANOPOULOS: You declare how you’re going to to it, but you don’t say how.
TRUMP: George, I’m telling you, it’s called management. You can do this and we can expedite the good ones to come back in. And everybody wants that. But they have to come in legally.

An analysis by the Center For American Progress estimates deporting 11.3 million people would cost $10,070 per person, or $114 billion. That only covers the “direct cost of physically deporting unauthorized immigrants.” The conservative American Action Forum, considering the total cost to the economy, estimates mass deportation of all undocumented immigrants would cost between $420 billion and $620 billion and take 20 years.

At the end of a lengthy exchange with Trump, Stephanopoulos stressed that he still hasn’t “heard the specifics on how you are going to do that.” Trump appeared to acknowledge he hasn’t offered any. “Oh, you’ll hear it, George. Don’t worry about it,” Trump said.

A recent Gallup poll found that just 19 percent of Americans supported mass deportation.

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HE WASN'T FUCKING ARMED

Video captured by a bystander, a woman screamed “He wasn’t fucking armed! You killed my husband” as Maryland State Police subdued her following an officer-involved shooting that left a 30-year-old man dead in a Walmart parking lot Friday night.

The Cecil Daily reports that Charles S. Hall was shot and killed by Trooper Daryl K. Brackett, a three-year veteran of the force who claimed he recognized Hall and knew there was a warrant out for his arrest.

According to State Police spokesperson Greg Shipley, Brackett attempted to arrest Hall but Hall allegedly resisted and fought with the trooper before getting into his vehicle and attempting to take off.

During the struggle, the trooper fired his assigned duty pistol, striking Hall in the upper torso,” Shipley said.

Hall was pronounced dead at the scene.

According to police, Hall was wanted for violating his probation and failure to appear for drug counseling. Hall also had another outstanding warrant for possession of drug paraphernalia.

A witness at the scene filmed an unidentified woman who claimed to be Hall’s wife struggling with police and pounding on the hood of a police car while screaming, “You are a murderer! He was not armed! He was not f*cking armed! You killed my husband!” as she tried to reach him laying on the ground.

According to witnesses, the woman was eventually strapped to a stretcher where she continued to attempt to break free while screaming at the officers.

In the video, a discussion can be heard with one man commenting Hall had been maced by the cop, saying, “He maced him. They should have been away from the car, telling him to get out,” before adding, “This is gonna be big time here — worse than other ones.”

“Is he colored?” the man asks only to be told, “No, he’s white, I think,” before replying, “That don’t even matter, that don’t even matter.”

A third man then adds, “Cause it don’t matter, he was a human.”

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AMERICAN GREED

Bill Maher closed the show on Friday with a scathing reprisal of the “sharing economy,” saying that the US spent 60 years fighting communism only for everyone to lose their jobs not to immigrants, but to robots and driver-less cars.



Maher slammed Americans for being their own worst enemies sometimes when it comes to the acceptance of this new sharing economy .

After taking apart the likes of Uber, Airbnb, TaskRabbit, Instacart, Luxe and Etsy, and plugging TRSRDeal.com, who will soon be renting Bill's pants for the low, low price of $5.95 a day, Maher asked how American ended up spending sixty years fighting communism and "end up in a barter economy on Craigslist?" And then there's the next big thing, which is humans being replaced by robots and driver-less cars. But as Maher noted, that's not the root cause of the problem.




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Roger West

DUGGAR’S, ONE FUCKED UP FAMILY

Anna Duggar won’t likely leave her husband despite his admitted cheating and will instead blame herself, according to a new report.

Josh Duggar, the former reality TV star and anti-LGBT activist, admitted Thursday to an addiction to pornography and infidelity after reports revealed he paid for two accounts on the adultery website Ashley Madison.

This comes three months after revelations that he molested four of his sisters and a family friend as they slept more than a decade ago, when he was a teenager.

A source told People magazine that Anna Duggar, who gave birth last month to the couple’s fourth child, would likely “absorb some of the blame” for her husband’s cheating.

“Anna will not leave him,” the source said. “As with her in-laws, she is turning more to her faith than ever. She and Josh are probably praying around the clock right now, I would assume.”

The 27-year-old Josh Duggar blamed Satan for building a “fortress” in his heart — but that statement, along with several others, was edited out of the confession he posted on the family’s website in the hours after it was originally released.

The source, who claims knowledge of the Duggar family, told People that Anna Duggar, also 27, would likely feel pressure from her in-laws, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, to shoulder some of the blame for her husband’s recent disgrace.

“Maybe not publicly, ever, but privately, there will be some suggestion of whether or not she should have been more aware of the pressures Josh was under, of the issues he was facing, and how she could have better counseled him or helped him,” the source said.

Her mother-in-law, Michelle Duggar, advises married women to have sex with their husband whenever he wants.

“Be available,” the 49-year-old said in an interview last year. “Anyone can fix him lunch, but only one person can meet that physical need of love that he has. You always need to be available when he calls.”

The family’s popular reality TV show, “19 Kids and Counting,” was dropped by TLC in the wake of the molestation scandal, but the Duggars have been desperately trying to return to television in some way, according to reports.

That appears even less likely now.

The source said Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, who are part of the patriarchal Quiverfull religious movement, would be determined to make sure their son and daughter-in-law remained married.

“As for Josh, in this moment, I would assume he feels like his life is ruined,” the source said. “It will be such a steep and practically impossible climb to come back from this.”

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Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

JARED FOGEL: “THE YOUNGER THE GIRL THE BETTER”

TOUR DE PANTS



Before Subway icon Jared Fogle was charged with multiple counts of child pornography and paying for sex with a minor, he was traveling the country speaking to children about how to improve their lives.

Fogle, who is expected to plead guilty to the charges, has been visiting grade schools for over a decade to promote healthy eating and exercise. Though he was speaking to groups of kids as early as 2003, his Subway-sanctioned “tour de pants” saw him visiting dozens of elementary and middle schools over the course of a year to talk about “healthy options.” Before that, Subway launched “Jared’s School Tour,” another national tour that saw Fogle speaking to kids about his weight loss, symbolized by a very large pair of pants.

Overall, it appears that Fogle made hundreds of presentations to children over the course of his career as a Subway spokesman. “The kids love the pants,” he said at one school visit.

That Fogle worked so closely with kids is particularly jarring given the contents of a plea agreement released by the U.S. Attorney of the Southern District of Indiana on Wednesday. According to USA Today, the document alleges that Fogle had sex with “at least two minors,” reportedly 16 and 17 years old, between 2010 and 2013. He allegedly asked one of the victims to “provide him with access to minors as young as 14 years” for sex. “The younger the girl, the better,” he allegedly said.

In a statement Subway spokesperson said Fogle’s actions “are inexcusable and do not represent our brand’s values.” She noted that the company had already ended its relationship with him.

While traveling the country and meeting kids for Subway, Fogle also partnered with charities like the Children’s Better Health Institute and the Oklahoma Fit Kids Coalition to push his message of combating childhood obesity. In 2011, he helped establish a “child wellness” program in Arizona schools. His foundation, established in 2004, was specifically geared toward kids.

“As adults we know about the healthier options that are available, but kids need to be directed a little bit more,” he said in 2008.

Subway cut its business ties with Fogle in July following the initial revelations that he may have been involved in child porn.

Fogle is not the only person with ties to The Jared Foundation who has been accused of child abuse. Russell Taylor, the former director of the foundation, was also accused of possessing — and producing — child pornography.

Jared Fogel, you are this year’s most putrid human of the world.

[cross-posted from thinkprogress]

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DOES ANN COULTER GET PAID EXTRA BY DONALD TRUMP FOR BOOTY SEX?

As republicans eat their own with Donald Trump leading the wing-nut circle jerk poll - A GOP consultant apologized on Tuesday after insulting conservative author and pundit Ann Coulter in the midst of a dispute with Breitbart.com, the Daily Caller reported.

Rick Wilson said on Twitter that he replied out of “parental anger” when he asked Coulter, “Does [Donald] Trump pay you more for anal?” after she mocked him for his “hilarious public meltdown” against the conservative news site. This meltdown reminds me of the Andy Brietbart meltdown at CPAC a few years ago.

BREITBART MELTDOWN

Wilson’s quarrel with Breitbart.com started when the site criticized him for calling Trump supporters “low-information voters.” [ if the shoe fits] Wilson later said on Twitter that one of its readers emailed him threatening to rape his daughter.

Other conservatives accused him of using the girl as a political prop to avoid criticism. Wilson later deleted his insult against Coulter and said Breitbart was not responsible for the threatening message.

Coulter later said that Wilson’s “only remaining move is to use the Anthony Weiner ‘MY TWITTER ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED!’ defense.”

Wilson did not do that, but did apologize to family and friends for his response to Coulter’s remark, which he called “vile.”

“I reduced myself by dropping to her level,” he wrote. “My comment was shocking to many of you, and for that I offer a sincere apology.”

I love it when the freak show goes full throttle against each other, talk about reality TV. Reagan's 11th commandment is abused again. 

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Roger West

CNN THE NEW FOX NEWS?

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD OF CNN

CNN Seemed surprised when a Hip-Hop movie didn’t cause violence - and they ran a segment on Monday reporting that there wasn’t violence at movie theaters during the opening weekend of the hip-hop oriented film Straight Outta Compton.

CNN host Ashleigh Banfield reported, “Some movie theaters were worried about violence when Straight Outta Compton hit the screen. Instead, it only led to longer lines, ticket lines and some big money, too.”

Costello brought on CNN law enforcement analyst Cedric Alexander to discuss the reaction to the film.

“There are some police organizations that are calling on people — members and maybe even beyond their members — not to see this movie because of the message they think it sends,” said Alexander, who was a police officer in the 1980s when the group’s hits first came out. “We really have to get away from this whole ‘f the police’ to ‘support the police.'”

The film tells the story of the group N.W.A., a group from Compton, California that was highly influential in the early days of hip-hop, and included several members that are still famous today, including Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, who also produced the film.

The film earned $56 million on opening weekend, a record for an R-rated film opening in August. Police reportedly patrolled theaters showing the film, but violence failed to materialize.

Universal, the company behind Straight Outta Compton, said they had “not solicited enhanced security for theaters” showing the film last weekend.

Some movie theaters have stepped up additional security screening after 59-year-old John Russell Houser, a white man, shot several at a movie theater in Louisiana at a screening of the Amy Schumer film Trainwreck. Reporting in the Wall Street Journal suggested the increased security was inspired not only by the shooting, but also ongoing racial tensions and “the rap biopic’s gang-oriented subject matter.”

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HUCKABEE PROVES TO BE A THINKER OFF THE BEATEN PATH

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is defending Paraguay’s controversial decision to deny an abortion to a 10-year-old girl who became pregnant after being raped by her stepfather.

Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, the Republican presidential candidate said it was “horrible” that the girl, now 11, was raped. “But does it solve the problem by taking the life of an innocent child?” he asked.




The story of the young girl — given the pseudonym “Mainumby” in legal documents — has captured a good deal of attention, as she recently gave birth after Paraguayan officials prohibited her from getting an abortion. Abortion is illegal in Paraguay, except “in very rare cases when it’s deemed necessary to save a woman’s life.”

Whether Mainumby’s pregnancy posed a threat to her life has been hotly debated, as medical experts say that girls under the age of 15 are more at risk for complications during childbirth. For that reason, Mainumby’s child had to be delivered via Cesarean section.

Paraguay’s policy is similar to what Huckabee and some other Republican presidential candidates say they would support if elected. Huckabee, Sen. Marco Rubio, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker have expressed a desire to ban abortion even in cases when women have been raped, or have been victims of incest.

The position has been unpopular in the past. Only 22 percent of Americans believe abortion should be illegal in cases of rape and incest, according to one Gallup poll.

CNN host Dana Bash appeared to question Huckabee’s position as well, pressing him on whether it would be easy “looking in the eyes of a 10-year-old girl and saying, ‘you had a horrible thing happen to you, and you’re going to have carry it out for the next nine months.”

“No, it isn’t easy,” Huckabee responded. “I wouldn’t pretend it’s anything other than a terrible tragedy. But let’s not compound the tragedy by taking yet another life.”

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Roger West

TED "THE PANTS SHITTER" NUGENT IS STILL A DOUCHE BAG

Is it conceivably possible that Ted Pedophile Nugent, and the Fox News base, can become any more disturbed? Nugent, appearing in a radio interview on WIBX’s Keeler in the Morning, was asked about the Megyn Kelly/Donald Trump feud. He sided with Trump, then added that Megyn Kelly is mostly useful for masturbation.

Nugent said, “I’m a big fan of Donald Trump because I believe in bold, aggressive, unapologetic truth. Period. And I’m not a fan of Megyn Kelly, although I often turn on Fox just to look at her. Sometimes when I’m loading my magazines, I like to just look at her. And I usually sit naked on the couch dropping hot brass on my stuff.”

Cenk Uygur, host of the The Young Turks, breaks it down. Watch:




Ted Nugent is this weeks douche bag of the week.


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Roger West

MILLION DOLLAR ADVICE FOR CLINTON

Bill Maher isn't ready to fork over a million dollars for Hillary Clinton's campaign, but would like to give her some advice on how to revive it. During last nights New Rules segment on HBO's Real Time, Maher told his audience that as much as he likes Bernie Sanders, he doesn't believe he's going to end up being the Democratic nominee, and expressed his concern over some of Clinton's recent poll numbers.

VIDEO COURTESY OF HBO







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Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

FOREIGN POLICY GOP STYLE

Foreign policy has taken an important role in the 2016 Republican Presidential primaries. One of the most prominent issues is how to deal with nefarious Islamist movement ISIS, also referred to as ISIL and the Islamic State.

ISIS’ meteoric rise over the summer of 2014 has pushed presidential front runners to take the group as a serious threat – both domestically and internationally. The latest attack — a truck bombing — killed at least 67 people in a Shia neighborhood of Baghdad on Thursday. Republicans have also focused heavily on the ISIS issue because the current administration’s policy has not gone according to plan. The United States’ program to train Syrian rebels has faced numerous setbacks while the bombing campaign that started a year ago has only experienced limited success.

So what alternative plan have the contenders proposed?

Marco Rubio

The Florida senator suggested forming an army of regional powers to fight ISIS.

“The United States should use it position of leadership to pull together a Sunni army, a Sunni ground force made up of Egyptians and Jordanians and Saudis and other kingdoms to go in on the ground [Syria and Iraq] and confront Sunni terrorists,” Rubio told Fox News in March. He said the key was to hit ISIS at its core in Syria and Iraq.

This approach has been touted by various politicians in recent months. In fact, Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi called for that exact thing in February only with one distinction. Rather than fight in Syria and Iraq, Sisi called for forming an Arab coalition to help protect Egypt from the ISIS threat in Libya. Egypt is currently facing serious internal security issues, particularly in Sinai, in addition to the ISIS threat in Libya.

That’s not the only pitfall, though. Back in April, Saudi Arabia formed a coalition to fight the Houthis in Yemen. It quickly went about seeking partners to contribute ground troop. Egypt said no, leaving the relatively small military capacity of the United Arab Emirates to partner with Saudi ground troops and aerial support in Yemen. But an important caveat with the Yemen case is that the Houthis are Zaidi Shia. The people of Gulf Arab powers (all ruled by Sunni monarchs) may have a harder time throwing support behind a campaign that fights fellow Sunnis, even if it is ISIS that they’re fighting. It also doesn’t help that wealthy individuals in some of these Gulf states — mainly Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait — have funneled money to groups like ISIS and the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria.

Mike Huckabee

The former Arkansas governor’s plan is pretty simple. “When we have a threat, whether it is ISIS, Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranians, whatever it is, we make it very clear that we plan to push back and destroy that threat to us,” Huckabee said in an interview with American Heartland with Dr. Grace. “And we won’t take 10 years doing it, we hopefully won’t even take 10 months, it will be like a 10 day exercise, because the fierceness of our forces would mean that we can absolutely guarantee the outcome of this film. That’s how America needs to operate in the world of foreign affairs, and foreign policy.”

The quick war trope has been trotted out before. Huckabee’s plan entails strong posturing toward America’s enemies followed by decisive military action. However, the United States already has what is widely considered the most formidable conventional army in the history of the world, and still wasn’t able to destroy oppositions firmly entrenched in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also, wiping out groups entrenched among civilian populations around the world in 10 days would rack up millions of civilian deaths, or collateral damage, if you want to take the rose-tinted view.

Chris Christie

In an interview with Sean Hannity in July, Christie focused on empowering regional allies to fight ISIS so that the U.S. wasn’t seen as an occupying force.

“We’ve got the Jordanians, the Egyptians, the Saudis, the Emirates, who all see ISIS as an existential threat to their existence. They don’t want to live under a theocracy,” the New Jersey governor said, even though Saudi Arabia is a theocracy. “We need to be training them down to the battalion level. We need more human intelligence on the ground to let them know where to target ISIS. And we need to stand with them, supply them with the arms they need, the sophistication they need, let them fight the fight there.”

Apart from the idea of forming an army of Arabs to fight ISIS, Christie argues for sending more arms to regional allies. President Obama ended a freeze on military aid to Egypt in March that provides them more than $1 billion. He’s also offered additional military aid to Saudi Arabia. But that doesn’t seem to have had any significant impact against ISIS’ continued reign of terror in Syria or Iraq.

Donald Trump

The real estate mogul also has a seemingly simple solution to defeating ISIS. “I would knock out the source of their wealth, the primary sources of their wealth, which is oil,” he told MSNBC. “And in order to do that, you would have to put boots on the ground. I would knock the hell out of them, but I’d put a ring around it and I’d take the oil for our country.”

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond T. Odierno said Wednesday that he disagreed with the current Republican frontrunner. “The problem we’ve had is we’ve had outcomes, but they’ve been only short-term outcomes because we haven’t properly looked at the political and economic side of it,” he said at a press briefing. “It has got to be three that come together. And if you don’t do that, it will not solve the problem, and that is what I continue to look at.”

Scott Walker

The Wisconsin governor hasn’t laid out much of a plan to date. He did say, however, “If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the globe.”

As Jim Geraghty writes in the National Review: “That is a terrible response. First, taking on a bunch of protesters is not comparably difficult to taking on a Caliphate with sympathizers and terrorists around the globe, and saying so suggests Walker doesn’t quite understand the complexity of the challenge from ISIS and its allied groups.”

Jeb Bush

After struggling with the question of whether or not he would have invaded Iraq in 2003, the former Florida governor has put together a plan more comprehensive than his competitors’. In a foreign policy speech Tuesday, Bush said the key to beating ISIS was to first remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and then unite the various rebel forces to fight ISIS.

This strategy has actually been expressed by a journalist who has done some of the best reporting on ISIS. In an interview this past July, Der Spiegel’s Christoph Reuter told a reporter, “There is no fast victory in Syria. The core problem is as long as Assad is there you will have no united front against Daesh [ISIS]. Once Assad is gone, everyone will be brought together to fight Daesh.”

He added: “Take out the [Assad] family first, which would help reunite the country, as well. In Iraq it’s much more complicated because you cannot change the mood of the Shiites.”

Of course, this is all easier said than done. To date, Assad has received military backing from Russia, Iran, and various Iranian proxies and, despite the recent nuclear deal, that isn’t likely to change.

Clearly none of these men are capable of running a home of four, let alone this country. Foreign policy has never been a forte of The American Taliban, and form these answers - they are not ready from prime time yet.

[Cross-posted from thinkprogress]

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Roger West

GIVE YOUR ADOPTED KIDS TO A RAPIST….WIN A “COURAGE” AWARD

JUSTIN HARRIS GOP HERO FOR GIVING ADOPTED KIDS TO A RAPIST

You can’t make this shit up!

A so-called family values organization will present an award at a fundraiser for GOP presidential hopeful Ted Cruz to a lawmaker who gave his two adopted daughters away to a rapist.

Arkansas State Sen. Justin Harris, a Republican, will be given the “Power of Courage” award by the Family Council Action Committee, a non-profit that is vocally anti-LGBT, the Arkansas Times reports. The awards will be given out Wednesday evening at a Cruz fundraiser dinner.

Another Republican, Rep. Charlene Fite, will also be honored with the award, which they are being given because they “demonstrated courage by standing strong in faith when situations were tough at the State Capitol and they did so with grace. They are consistently models of their Christian values in their homes, their communities, and their churches.”

According to the Times, Harris used his influence as a lawmaker to pressure state child services to allow him and his wife to adopt two young girls, even though caseworkers said the couple was ill-suited to care for them.

Eight months later, the adoption failed. The Harrises sent the girls to live with family friends. One of the girls was sexually abused by the father, who is now serving a 40-year prison sentence for crimes against children.

Before “rehoming” the girls, the Harrises believed the children were possessed by demons and could communicate telepathically. The Harrises apparently feared the girls and had an exorcist “cast out” the demons. According to the Times, they kept one of the girls locked in a room with no toys or books, monitoring her on closed-circuit television.

While the other child was allowed to roam the house, the girls were separated by an elaborate system of locks and alarms.

The Harrises were not prosecuted because there was no law on the books in Arkansas barring “rehoming” of adopted children at the time. After the case became public, lawmakers quickly made it illegal to do so without court supervision, but the law is not retroactive.

In a press release for the event obtained by the Times, mention of these events is only made obliquely:

Even when opposed by the liberal media, Representative Harris has always held firm and stood tall in his faith. No one can deny Representative Harris’ faith has always led him while serving at the Arkansas State Capitol. In 2015, Harris sponsored the Parental Involvement Enhancement Act, requiring parents to be involved in their children’s decision to terminate life by requesting an abortion. This is now law today.

According to the Times, Harris makes his living running a religious preschool called Growing God’s Kingdom.

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Roger West

POLICE IN FREDDIE GRAY CASE LEAKING “ARSENAL OF MATERIAL” TO DEFENSE

BALTIMORE — At least one former or current member of the Baltimore Police Department has been "actively working" with defense attorneys for the six officers charged in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray, according to prosecutors — leaking them an "arsenal of material" to use in a "campaign of public relations warfare."

Deputy State's Attorney Michael Schatzow alleged in a recent motion that some of the information leaked to the defense has been true and some false. He warned defense attorneys that they are not entitled to "blindly believe and repeat every piece of information they may have been told by politically motivated sources."

The source of the information was not identified, and Schatzow did not specify what information is believed to have been leaked.

The motion follows others in which defense attorneys have alleged that the prosecution has not provided all of the evidence they are entitled to receive and said that they have conducted their own lengthy investigation of the case as a result — in part by interviewing state witnesses, some of whom are police officers.

On Tuesday, the Police Department directed all questions to Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby, who did not respond to a request for comment.

None of the officers' attorneys responded to a request for comment.

Gray, 25, died in April after suffering a severe spinal cord injury while in police custody. His death was followed by protests against police brutality, and rioting, looting and arson erupted on the day of his funeral. Days after the unrest, Mosby announced charges against the six officers involved in Gray's arrest.

Officer Caesar R. Goodson Jr., the driver of the police van in which Gray was injured, is charged with second-degree depraved-heart murder. Sgt. Alicia D. White, Lt. Brian W. Rice and Officer William G. Porter are charged with manslaughter. Officers Edward M. Nero and Garrett E. Miller face lesser charges, including second-degree assault.

All of the officers have pleaded not guilty. They have yet to appear in court.

Their attorneys and the prosecutors have been litigating the case through a flurry of motions — each side alleging improprieties while also complaining that the other side's arguments have been written with flourishes aimed less at the court than at the news media.

In his latest motion, Schatzow asked the court to sanction defense attorneys for, among other things, using their subpoena power without the court knowing to obtain the text messages of a prosecutor working on the case and making "a knowingly false attack on an esteemed Circuit Court judge's integrity."

The defense has cited the text messages as evidence of "judge shopping" on the part of the prosecutor, who they said went to Judge Timothy J. Doory to obtain a warrant for the officers' cellphones after another judge had denied the request.

More recently, the defense has alleged that prosecutors have withheld information from the police investigation into Gray's death, and that Assistant State's Attorney Janice Bledsoe told police investigators not to pursue information that Gray had a history of participating in "crash-for-cash" schemes — injuring himself in law enforcement settings to collect settlements — so as not to "do the defense attorneys' jobs for them."

They have asked that Mosby's office be removed from the case.

In his motion, Schatzow characterized the defense allegations as obvious attempts, based on information obtained from questionable sources, to sway the jury pool — using the media "like Defense marionettes" in the process.

"This Court's judicial powers and processes have become Defense instruments in a publicly performed symphony of slander, innuendo, and victim-bashing," Schatzow wrote.

Schatzow asked that the court, through sanctions, restrict the defense attorneys' subpoena powers; require that they provide copies of all past subpoenas issued in the case and any information obtained through those subpoenas for a court review; clear the way for prosecutors to seek to quash or seek a protective order over any of that material; and warn the defense that "any future pleadings found to be made in bad faith may result in additional sanctions, including being held in contempt."

He wrote that the defense attorneys should have brought their concerns about missing evidence directly to prosecutors instead of writing about them in motions.

Schatzow acknowledged that after the concerns were raised about missing evidence — including some allegedly contained in the initial police investigation before it was handed over to the state's attorney's office — prosecutors went back to police to determine the facts, going through "the list of allegedly missing items."

"While most of the items do not exist, the investigators turned over to the State's Attorney's Office a few additional materials that they had never previously provided and which were then promptly given to the defense in a supplemental disclosure," he wrote.

A motions hearing is scheduled Sept. 2, though Judge Barry Williams could rule on motions in the case before then.

Jose F. Anderson, a law professor at the University of Baltimore and a former public defender in the city, said Williams might have much to say about the public squabbling between the two sides over evidence and discovery.

"Judges like parties to work these things out privately and among themselves as ladies and gentlemen," he said. "Most circuit judges will not be happy with games being played by either the prosecution or defense with discovery in such a high-profile case."

As for the defense attorneys getting information from a police source, Anderson said that would be "pretty rare" — though the defense attorneys have a right to conduct their own investigation in the case and try to talk to witnesses.

Still, he said, they could have taken concerns with what they found to the prosecution for further discussion without casting "a cloud over the prosecutors' motives" in court filings or giving the impression that they have "additional sources that are not equally sharing information with the prosecutors."

[Crossposted from Baltimore Sun]

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