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News

Texas governor Rick Perry signs tort reform into law

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From the San Antonio Business Journal. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Gov. Rick Perry on Monday signed into law a bill meant to limit frivolous lawsuits.

House Bill 274 — the so-called “loser pays” act — was deemed an emergency item by the governor at the start of the session.

Business groups such as the Texas Association of Business, the National Federation of Independent Businesses and the Texas Association of Manufacturers lauded the tort reform omnibus bill for allowing courts to stop meritless lawsuits early in the process.

The bill streamlines justice by allowing plaintiffs seeking less than $100,000 to request an expedited civil action. The new law, which goes into effect Sept. 1, also transfers risk to those filing an abusive lawsuit by requiring some losing plaintiffs to pay court costs and fees of the defendant.

“HB 274 provides defendants and judges with a variety of tools that will cut down on frivolous claims in Texas,” Gov. Perry said. “This important legislation will help make Texas that much more attractive to employers seeking to expand or relocate from countries all over the world by allowing them to spend less time in court and more time creating jobs.”

This should help to move even more businesses to Texas, creating even more jobs.

News

Should we cut foreign aid to governments who oppose us at the UN?

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From CNS News, a story about foreign policy.

Excerpt:

A Republican amendment to appropriations legislation would bar funding for any government that opposes the U.S. position at the United Nations more often than not. Although unlikely to make it into law, the amendment draws fresh attention to the fact that a majority of countries, including most leading recipients of U.S. foreign aid, would fall into that category.

Among multiple amendments inserted into the State Department and foreign operations authorization bill during a House Foreign Affairs Committee markup last week was one by Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) prohibiting any foreign assistance to governments that vote against the U.S. position at the U.N. more than 50 percent of the time.

Grades would be obtained from annual State Department reports on voting practices at the U.N., which have been required under U.S. law for decades, and would relate to votes in the General Assembly during its most recent session, or in the case of members of the Security Council, to their votes in both the council and assembly.

In order to waive the prohibition, the president would, on a case-by-case basis, have to issue Congress with a determination that invoking the waiver was “important to the national interests of the United States.”

Duncan’s amendment passed by a party-line vote of 22-18, and was among those incorporated into the final version of the bill that passed out of the full committee by a 23-20 vote late last Thursday night.

“We’re $14.3 trillion in debt,” the tea party-backed Republican freshman said in a statement Monday. “Why should we pay countries to hate us when they’ve shown they’re willing to do it for free?”

“The United States has no business giving money away to countries and groups who seek to do us harm.”

This bill makes sense, so the Democrats are opposed to it.

Commentary

Does the mainstream media tell the truth about Cuba?

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From the Heritage Foundation.

Excerpt:

Last week, just outside Cuba’s holiest Catholic shrine, government thugs attacked in plain daylight a group of opposition women — beating them, stoning them and stripping them naked to the waist. The women, mostly black and middle-aged, suffered this public humiliation because they were trying to find a dignified way to bring attention to the plight of their husbands, who are in prison for freely speaking their minds.

The archbishop of Santiago de Cuba has condemned the attack. You can find an eyewitness account in Spanish in the above video.

It should make for poignant watching today, the anniversary of the start of the Cuban Revolution.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing unusual in this grotesque attack on the Damas de Blanco (or Ladies in White, the harassed association of wives of political prisoners) on the street outside the shrine of Our Lady of La Caridad del Cobre. It’s routine for Cubans to be publicly degraded, brutalized and imprisoned when they dare speak their minds. Their daily existence has been one of fear and wretched suffering for 50 years now.

Yet the chances are that you probably haven’t heard about this story. A quick Google search of the attacks on the Damas de Blanco turned up only about five hits, none from a major publication. Why?

Not because it’s a dog-bites-man story (literally, in this case), as some journalists might have you believe. No, it’s simply because the media don’t report the daily attacks on the Cuban dissidents.

The left in America seems to really approve of communism in Cuba. One wonders if they have any idea what really goes on there. Or maybe they do know, and they approve of it.