Monthly Archives: June 2016

News

Obama administration gave Planned Parenthood $550 million in 2015

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Barack Obama speaking to Planned Parenthood
Barack Obama speaking to Planned Parenthood

The Daily Signal reports:

Whether you’re a painter, pastor, lawyer, or laborer (pro-life or pro-abortion), you work for Planned Parenthood. A portion of every paycheck goes to the world’s leading abortion business through the federal and state taxes allocated by your elected representatives and the unelected bureaucrats they empower.

For the fiscal year ending in June 2015 (just before the Center for Medical Progress videos were released), over $550 million of your hard-earned tax dollars went to Planned Parenthood.

Bad, especially if you are a pro-life taxpayer.

But there is good news – in the United States, we have federalism, and individual states have acted to stop the funding of abortion providers.

Since the authenticated Center for Medical Progress videos were released showing Planned Parenthood officials bartering over the prices of baby body parts, 15 states have taken action to end or limit its taxpayer subsidies.

Here are just a few examples of what state legislatures and governors have done:

  • New Hampshire canceled over $600,000 in annual state grants to Planned Parenthood.
  • Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas moved to exclude Planned Parenthood from the states’ Medicaid programs “for cause,” citing its waste, abuse, and potential fraud and the evidence of violations of the law and ethics demonstrated in the Center for Medical Progress videos.
  • Wisconsin and Arizona have slashed the Medicaid reimbursement for certain drugs for entities like Planned Parenthood that receive them at artificially low rates under a federal government program, denying them windfall profits and making those funds available to more women and families.
  • Ohio, Florida, Utah, and Wisconsin have also eliminated Planned Parenthood from other federal and state grant programs administered by the state.

These actions have potentially eliminated tens of millions in annual taxpayer subsidies going to Planned Parenthood. This represents a small part of the hundreds of millions that it receives, but it is a solid start. And these efforts may at least cut into the $59 million in “excess revenue” the abortion outfit reported last year alone.

Now, I read the $59 million in “excess revenue” figure as Planned Parenthood’s PROFIT off their terminations, and selling the body parts of the unborn victims to the highest bidder.

Remember the Republican bill to de-fund Planned Parenthood? The Democrat President Obama vetoed that bill. It was passed by a majority of Congressmen and Senators, but Obama is a Democrat, and he vetoed the bill. Do you know anyone who claims to be pro-life who voted for Obama? Maybe you should ask them about that veto, and about the $550 million subsidy.

News

New study: women who attend church regularly are healthier, and live longer

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Church is good for you
Church is good for you

CNS News reports on a new Harvard study that was published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

It says:

A new study by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and published online in JAMA Internal Medicine found that women who attended religious services more than once a week were more than 30% less likely to die during a 16-year-follow-up than women who never attended.

The study also found that compared with women who never attended religious services, women who attended more than once per week had a decreased risk of both cardiovascular mortality (27%) and cancer mortality (21%).

“Our results suggest that there may be something important about religious service attendance beyond solitary spirituality,” said Tyler VanderWeele, professor of epidemiology at Harvard Chan School and senior author of the study. “Part of the benefit seems to be that attending religious services increases social support, discourages smoking, decreases depression, and helps people develop a more optimistic or hopeful outlook on life.”

[…]Most of the women in the study were Protestant or Catholic. The baseline age of the participants was 60 years or older – and “therefore the study cannot be generalized to men or young adults.”

Now, note: this is not an apologetics argument, it’s just something interesting to get a discussion started. Obviously, we don’t believe things just because they make us happier or healthier. I would raise this to get a discussion started about whether a secular life that suppresses questions of meaning and purpose can really be satisfying at all. My goal is truth, though. Not life enhancement. We have to keep the focus on truth.

News

Hillary Clinton e-mail administrator to plead the fifth

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Hillary Clinton look bored about the deaths of 4 Americans who asked for her help
Hillary Clinton look bored about the deaths of 4 Americans who asked for her help

This is from The Hill.

Excerpt:

The man believed to have set up and maintained Hillary Clinton’s private email server will assert his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and refuse to answer questions as part of an open records lawsuit against the State Department.

Bryan Pagliano will decline to answer questions from Judicial Watch, the conservative legal watchdog group, during a deposition scheduled for Monday, his lawyers wrote in a court filing on Wednesday afternoon. 

The move forecloses the possibility that Pagliano would break his months of silence about the server issue, even as scrutiny has intensified on his role.

Pagliano’s lawyers told Judicial Watch more than a week ago that he would not be answering any questions, they claimed in their filing on Wednesday, and asked that it drop its subpoena. The organization refused.

In the filing, Pagliano’s lawyers tried to have a federal judge block Judicial Watch from recording his deposition, given his planned refusal to answer questions.

[…]“Given the constitutional implications, the absence of any proper purpose for video recording the deposition, and the considerable risk of abuse, the court should preclude Judicial Watch … from creating an audiovisual recording of Mr. Pagliano’s deposition,” they wrote.

Videotaped depositions “pose a serious danger to deponents invoking the Fifth Amendment,” the lawyers added, pointing to past court decisions warning that the video makes a good “soundbite.”

[…]The IT expert has previously refused to answer questions on Capitol Hill, invoking his Fifth Amendment rights before the House Select Committee on Benghazi and rejecting requests from leaders of the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security committees to answer their questions.

Last month, the State Department said that it had lost the backup archive of Pagliano’s emails from his time at the department. However, it had been able to cobble together some emails through the accounts of other officials.

The sound bite of the IT administrator pleading the fifth would make a wonderful ad against Hillary. And don’t forget how Lois Lerner of the IRS also pleaded the fifth about the Obama administration’s persecution of conservative and Christian groups in an election year. These Democrats wouldn’t want to incriminate themselves and go to jail, would they? Better to plead the fifth and avoid being held accountable for what you did. It’s the Democrat way.