Trophy Hunting Can Help African Conservation, Study Says







Trophy hunting can play an essential role in the conservation of African wildlife, according to a growing number of biologists.

Now some experts are calling for a program to regulate Africa's sport-hunting industry to ensure its conservation benefits.


According to a recent study, in the 23 African countries that allow sport hunting, 18,500 tourists pay over $200 million (U.S.) a year to hunt lions, leopards, elephants, warthogs, water buffalo, impala, and rhinos.

Private hunting operations in these countries control more than 540,000 square miles (1.4 million square kilometers) of land, the study also found. That's 22 percent more land than is protected by national parks.

As demand for land increases with swelling human populations, some conservationists are arguing that they can garner more effective results by working with hunters and taking a hand in regulating the industry.

Sport hunting can be sustainable if carefully managed, said Peter Lindsey, a conservation biologist with the University of Zimbabwe in Harare, who led the recent study.

"Trophy hunting is of key importance to conservation in Africa by creating [financial] incentives to promote and retain wildlife as a land use over vast areas," he said.

In an upcoming edition of the journal Conservation Biology Lindsey and an international team of colleagues call for a plan to increase the conservation benefits of sport hunting, including a certification program to more tightly regulate the industry.

"To justify the continued existence of [protected] areas in the context of increasing demand for land, wildlife has to pay for itself and contribute to the economy, and hunting provides an important means of achieving this," Lindsey said.

Hunting's Checkered Past

In order to be certified under Lindsey's proposed plan, hunting operations would have to prove their commitment to animal welfare, careful management of hunting quotas, wide-ranging conservation objectives, and the development of local communities.

"The time has come for greater scrutiny from scientists to promote maximum conservation benefits from hunting," Lindsey said.



http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/070315-hunting-africa.html


 

Jon Stewart has been a major cultural and political commentator for the past 16 years. He liked to take down the powerful—at least, when his head wasn’t shoved up Uncle Sam’s ass.

As The Daily Show host ends his run, reminisce with Reason TV the top five ways Jon Stewart was full of shit.



http://reason.com/reasontv/2015/08/05/5-ways-jon-stewart-was-full-of-shit

Lois Lerner Wanted To Audit A Group With Ties To Bristol Palin







Embattled ex-IRS official Lois Lerner inquired about auditing a pro-abstinence group with ties to Bristol Palin, the daughter of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, according to a Senate report released on Wednesday.

Senate Finance Committee chairman Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, disclosed Lerner’s email — which she sent in April 2011 — in an addendum to a report detailing the results of a two-year investigation into whether the IRS unfairly targeted conservative groups.

The bi-partisan report concluded that Lerner and the IRS often ignored applications for tax-exempt status submitted by Tea Party organizations and other groups.

One example of this was an email Lerner sent to her supervisors asking whether an audit should be conducted on Candie’s Foundation, a nonprofit group which seeks to limit teen pregnancy.

Bristol Palin was paid $332,500 to serve as an “ambassador” for the organization, which was founded by an executive at Candie’s Inc., an apparel company.

After Lerner learned of the payment to Palin from a news article, she wrote in an April 8, 2011, email chain to David Fish, Judith Kindell — two IRS officials — and others:


Thoughts on the Bristol Palin issue? I’m curious that a [private foundation] can pay any amount to someone who is not a [disqualified person]? It is a [private foundation] right? Even if it were a [public charity] – would that be private benefit – what are the consequences? I’m asking because I don’t know whether to send to Exam as a referral.


Hatch noted how unusual it was for Lerner to consider an audit based upon a single news article. He noted that out of 1.5 million IRS records reviewed by his committee staff, there were no other instances where Lerner referred a progressive group for an audit based on a single news article.

“Lerner’s willingness to act on this particular news article – among many that reached her inbox each day – shows that she was paying close attention to conservative politicians and organizations,” Hatch stated in his report.

USA Today noted another partisan comment from Lerner that Hatch cited in his report.

In a March 6, 2014, email exchange Lerner and a friend were discussing the political landscape in Texas. Lerner’s friend criticized Rick Perry and Greg Abbott, the former and current governors of the state, respectively.

“As you can see, the Lone Star State is just pathetic as far as political attitudes are concerned,” the friend wrote to Lerner.

She responded by stating that Abraham Lincoln should have allowed the South to secede from the Union.

“Look my view is that Lincoln was our worst president not our best. He should’[v]e let the south go. We really do seem to have 2 totally different mindsets,” she wrote.



http://dailycaller.com/2015/08/05/lois-lerner-wanted-to-audit-a-group-with-ties-to-bristol-palin/


-------------------------------------------------------------------
Worse than The Camorra...

Funny.... Reddit 'forgot' to ban one group:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitRedditSays


 

“Our Climate Is Changing 10,000 Times Faster Than Ever In History”…




“Climate change is happening, humans are causing it, and I think this is perhaps the most serious environmental issue facing us.” — Bill Nye The Science Guy

This issue is going to be one of the major storylines of our film, as we follow Bill on his journey to educate, debate and engage about climate change.

Today, we’re excited to premiere a new video of Bill Nye as he makes the case that climate change is undeniable, and that we need to take action.

https://www.facebook.com/billnyefilm/videos/1479584119019387/?fref=nf


-----------------------------------------
SOLD! For 10,000!!!!!!!

"97 going 98% of the world's scientists.."

 

Q. What is WWF's position on trophy hunting
Sparsely wooded grassy plain with mountains in the background Kunene Province, Damaraland, Namibia
WWF does not promote or support hunting generally and is opposed to hunting that threatens species or habitat sustainability. At the same time, WWF recognises that communities use their wildlife and these uses include hunting and fishing.

As a leading conservation organisation, WWF works to address illegal or unsustainable exploitation of wildlife. Within this framework, WWF accepts or supports hunting in a very limited number of contexts where it is culturally appropriate, legal and effectively regulated, and has demonstrated environmental and community benefits.




http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/11785785/Cecil-the-lion-legal-hunting-can-help-conservation-says-Rory-Stewart.html


--------------------
If the country gives you a licence then its... fair game!

Reddit updates content policy, bans a 'handful' of groups that exist 'solely to annoy' others






 Reddit, the online discussion site known for free-wheeling discussions, is updating its content policy as it tries to be a more welcoming place for everyone.

Co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman posted on the site Wednesday that the goal is to consolidate the "various rules and policies that have accumulated over the years into a single set of guidelines."

He says illegal content, inciting violence and "involuntary pornography" are still banned.

So what's new? A community can now be quarantined — so that only people who choose to see its content can see it. Huffman says groups will be quarantined if they would be "extremely offensive" to the average Redditor.

He says Reddit is also banning communities that exist solely to annoy others, and "generally make Reddit worse for everyone else."


http://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2015/08/05/reddit-updates-content-policy-banning-a-handful-of-groups

PolitiFact and Planned Parenthood: Erroneous Fact Checks All the Way Down



Planned Parenthood now finds itself being heavily criticized after being caught on tape brokering fetal body parts. Fortunately for them, they have no shortage of allies in the media, including PolitiFact.

Fox Business reporter Sandra Smith recently said on air "Almost 95 percent of all (Planned Parenthood) pregnancy services were abortions." On Tuesday, PunditFact, a division of PolitiFact, rated it false.

PolitiFact concedes the source of this statistic is Planned Parenthood's own annual report. If you take the number of services listed in the report, exclude the ones that don't apply to women who aren't pregnant, you do indeed get a figure that showing that over 94 percent of pregnant women who go to Planned Parenthood get an abortion.

After validating the source of the stat, PolitiFact then says, "For several reasons, that’s a misleading way to analyze the data." That's an odd statement because PolitiFact then goes on to provide one concrete reason for why the statistic is inaccurate. And it's a very dubious rationale:

Not all of Planned Parenthood approximately 700 clinics offer prenatal services because prenatal care is not Planned Parenthood's focus. As a result, many pregnant women are referred to outside obstetricians or other health providers for prenatal care.

How many? It's impossible to know.

Planned Parenthood does not record how many pregnant patients are referred to outside health care providers, said Catherine Lozada, a Planned Parenthood spokeswoman.

If referrals were included, the 95 percent figure would likely change, though we can't say by how much — and neither can Smith nor the [pro-life] Susan B. Anthony List.

To what extent is a referral a service? Let's say a woman walks into a beauty parlor and needs a manicure, but is told they don't do manicures at this establishment and is told to go to another place down the road. Does the first establishment get credit for helping provide a service they don't provide? Now it's more complicated in the medical world, as sometimes you need a referral from one doctor to see another doctor or specialist. However, saying referrals to other doctors is a service Planned Parenthood provides -- let alone one they conveniently don't keep track of so that they can't be pinned down on when asked how many abortions provide relative to other services provided to pregnant women -- is quite a stretch. Especially when you consider that Planned Parenthood clearly tries to obfuscate how many abortions they perform.

Beyond that single dodgy reason declaring the stat false, PunditFact's ruling explaining their decison is full of irrelevant bluster. (PolitiFact is basically notorious for padding their rulings with irrelevant facts and context to make their reasoning more opaque than it needs to be.) But what's interesting is that in the process of explaining what's going on with Planned Parenthood's accounting of services provided, they manage to directly contradict another PolitiFact fact check. Here's what PunditFact said in their ruling Tuesday:

Of all services, abortions account for 3 percent of services performed, said Erica Sackin, a Planned Parenthood spokeswoman, pointing to page 18 of the report.

But looking at the share of abortions per patient (and assuming one procedure per patient), the figure rises to 12 percent.

Some critics have taken issue with Planned Parenthood’s measurement of "services." Performing an abortion is more involved than administering pregnancy tests or giving someone a contraception kit, for example. The share of abortions might be different if cost or hours of services were used. (However, that information is not in the 2013-14 annual report.)

In fact, the stat that only three percent of Planned Parenthood's services are abortion is so misleading, that the editorial board of USA Today has decided it's not credible and they won't use it for the exaxct same reasoning PunditFact lays out here.



http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/politifact-and-planned-parenthood-erroneous-fact-checks-all-way-down_1005629.html

Obama: Killing Humans And Harvesting Their Organs Is An Atrocity That Must End



President Barack Obama told a group of young African leaders on Monday that harvesting organs from humans that are killed as part of an African ritual was “craziness” and a “cruel” tradition that needed to stop. He warned of dehumanizing marginal groups of humans and of the problems that arise when “you are not able to see someone else as a human being.”

In a wide-ranging question and answer session with members of the Young African Leaders Initiative [YALI], a woman from Kenya said “Persons with albinism in Africa are being killed and their body parts harvested for ritual purposes. My request to you is to raise this issue with heads of state of African countries to bring these atrocities to an end.”

Obama decried the practice and went on to encourage the young people to do everything in their power to fight on the behalf of vulnerable humans.



“Young people, you can lead the way and set a good example. But it requires some courage because the old thinking, people will push back at you and if you don’t have convictions and courage to be able stand up for what you think is right, then cruelty will perpetuate itself,” he said. He added, “If there’s one thing I want YALI leaders to come out with, it’s the notion of you are strong by taking care of the people who are vulnerable, by looking after the minority, looking after the disabled, looking after the vulnerable. You’re not strong by putting people down you’re strong by lifting them up. That’s the measure of a leader.”


Obama also tied the practice of harvesting organs from albinos with racism and discrimination against gay people and urged consistency in how they view the sanctity of human life if they want to complain about human rights abuses.


http://thefederalist.com/2015/08/05/obama-killing-humans-and-harvesting-their-organs-is-an-atrocity-that-must-end/

But if you KILL the fetus after delivery, then maybe you can sell its tissues for profit? Then I am sure that would be legal?

If you take a whole fetus, alive, then you cut it up for sale. Is that a crime or is it still dead flesh?

A dude with his daughters sunbathing should have an EMP canon with him all the time now? Drones will be like mosquitoes...


 

Man shoots drone trespassing over his property and is arrested


A Kentucky man shot down an $1,800 drone hovering over his sunbathing daughter and was then arrested and charged with first degree criminal mischief and first-degree wanton endangerment.

“My daughter comes in and says, ‘Dad, there’s a drone out here flying,’ ” William H. Merideth, 47, told a local Fox News affiliate reported Tuesday. The Bullitt County father shot at the drone, which crashed in a field near his yard Sunday night.

The owner of the drone claims he was only trying to take pictures of a friend’s house, the station reported.

“I went and got my shotgun and I said, ‘I’m not going to do anything unless it’s directly over my property,’ ” Mr. Merideth said, noting that the drone briefly disappeared when his daughter waved it off. “Within a minute or so, here it came. It was hovering over top of my property, and I shot it out of the sky. I didn’t shoot across the road, I didn’t shoot across my neighbor’s fences, I shot directly into the air.”

[...]
“He didn’t just fly over,” he said. “If he had been moving and just kept moving, that would have been one thing — but when he come directly over our heads, and just hovered there, I felt like I had the right.”

“You know, when you’re in your own property, within a six-foot privacy fence, you have the expectation of privacy,” he said. “We don’t know if he was looking at the girls. We don’t know if he was looking for something to steal. To me, it was the same as trespassing.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jul/30/william-merideth-arrested-after-shooting-down-1800/


[...]
You’d think it would be obvious that it’s not a good idea to pilot an expensive piece of surveillance equipment just casually over other people’s properties, not just out of respect for other people’s privacy, but because you could lose the thing.

http://reason.com/blog/2015/07/30/ruby-dont-take-your-drone-to-town

2015 08 04 Rush Limbaugh caller inadvertently admits Planned Parenthood kills babies


Description: A caller into Rush Limbaugh's show claims that his wife works for Planned Parenthood and inadvertently admits that Planned Parenthood kills babies and stuff them in bags. But according to the caller, it's okay since they do more than just kill babies. The only problem is that PP is in the abortion business, thus the only other "service" they provide is to encourage sexual promiscuity to ensure that the abortion business remains booming.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJWCDLjVyD0

Harry Reid: Republicans Have Lost “Moral Compass” Because They Won’t Harvest Baby Kidneys and Livers


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KOWR4vhBT4



Hmm...

Caution Urged over Editing DNA in Wildlife






“Crap!” That was the first word out of Kevin Esvelt’s mouth as he scanned a paper published in Science last March. The work described the use of a gene-editing technique to insert a mutation into fruit flies that would be passed on to almost all of their offspring. Although intriguing, the report made Esvelt feel uneasy: if engineered flies escaped from a lab, the mutation could spread quickly through a wild population.

But that was exactly what exhilarated molecular biologist Anthony James at the University of California, Irvine. “Holy mackerel!” he wrote to the study’s authors. “Can we use it in mosquitoes?”

On July 30, the US National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) held the first in a series of meetings meant to find ways to balance the promise and perils of the technique, called ‘gene drive’. The method can rapidly modify not just a single organism but a whole population, by inserting a desired genetic modification into an organism along with DNA that increases the rate at which the change is passed to the next generation. The technique could be used to render mosquitoes unable to carry malaria parasites or to wipe out harmful invasive species, but it could also have unanticipated environmental costs and might be impossible to reverse. “Once this is out there, you cannot call it back,” says Walter Tabachnick, a population geneticist at the University of Florida in Vero Beach.

The idea of gene drive has been around for more than a decade. But its practicality was given a huge boost around three years ago with the arrival of CRISPR, a gene-editing technique that allows precise changes to an organism’s DNA.

The Science paper, by developmental biologist Ethan Bier and his student Valentino Gantz at the University of California, San Diego, used CRISPR to insert a modification into genes on both chromosomes in a pair, so that when the flies bred, they would pass the modification on to practically all of their offspring.

The work came out of a desire to develop a system that would make it easier to study genetic changes in organisms that are difficult to breed in the laboratory. Because CRISPR has been shown to work in a wide range of creatures, researchers hope one day to be able to engineer wild populations in much the same way.


Call for concern

Mindful of both the potential and the risks, Esvelt, a bioengineer at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, brought together a group of scientists to write a Comment in Science, published last week, laying out the need for multiple containment strategies for gene-drive research that is done in the laboratory. Meanwhile, the NAS meeting marks the start of a 15-month search for ways to minimize the risk in advance of field releases. Because no one is known to have made CRISPR work in mosquitoes—the mostly likely organism for the application of the technology—the committee has some time to do its work.

But there is still urgency, noted Todd Kuiken, who explores the interface of science and policy at the Wilson Center, a think tank in Washington DC. CRISPR gene-drive technology is developing at a breakneck pace, and has the potential to dramatically alter ecosystems in unexpected ways. At the meeting, Kuiken used the invasion of Asian carp into some US lakes as an example of how little is known about some wild ecosystems. “While this is an invasive species, it’s also an established species,” he says. “I don’t think we have a good understanding of how we evaluate what happens when we remove a species from as large an ecosystem such as this.”

Meanwhile, Esvelt and his colleagues are studying the CRISPR gene-drive system in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans to learn more about what happens to a population as engineered DNA is passed down through generations, accumulating mutations as it goes. They are also testing ways to make sure that a gene drive can be countermanded once it has been set loose.

These issues need immediate attention, says geneticist Daniel Wattendorf at the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Virginia. Security concerns may mean that DARPA needs to start working on the technology before guidelines are drawn up, he adds.

And Tabachnick remains concerned that these preparations may not suffice. “How do you test such a system, and how do you do it safely?” he asks. “I’m not convinced that any of this work could ever possibly provide the assurance of safety that one might demand.”


http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/caution-urged-over-editing-dna-in-wildlife/

Don't trust what bush told you. Trust 0bama though. The most transparent administration. EVAH!!!


 

Drone have been used to drop bombs, spy on foreign countries and monitor how farmers work their fields. Now they could help hack into personal computers.

According to e-mails posted by WikiLeaks, military contractors may want to do just that. Boeing and Hacking Team — a Milan-based company criticized for selling surveillance software to repressive governments — were in talks earlier this year to plant malware on drones to perform such activities, according to the e-mails, which were stolen from Hacking Team in July.

According to an e-mail that summarizes the contents of a meeting between the two companies, Boeing was searching for a "ruggedized" network injector "transportable by drone (!)."

Drone and network analysts offer a scenario about how this type of technology could work:

A highly desired al-Qaeda operative is on the lam, hiding out in a bungalow in the foothills of some not-so-allied country, which may or may not be protecting him from U.S. detection. The American military could try hacking into that government's computer network to look for intelligence, but reaching across the globe through a keyboard is pretty hard and time-consuming.

Or, the military could put an unmanned drone in the air equipped with malware to fly over the highly desired operative's bungalow and conduct some surveillance.

That kind of hardware on an unmanned aircraft would give its user the ability to conduct cyberwarfare and espionage in ways that formerly required close proximity with the target, according to those analysts.

"You want to be able to place yourself in the middle of traffic to surveil it or gain access to it," said independent network researcher Collin Anderson. "What this gives you is the ability to be in the same room as all the other machines you’re tying to look out for."

A Hacking Team spokesman said Boeing and Hacking Team have "no business relationship at all."

Boeing, which makes the ScanEagle drone for the military and is pitching the Phantom Eye drone as well, declined to comment on its communication with Hacking Team but said in a statement that it is important to understand new hardware and software capabilities in order to offer them to clients.


"Understanding the payload technologies available to our customers in this market is essential to providing them with the services they require," Boeing said.

The ability to hack someone using a drone may be attractive for the military, said Michael Blades, a senior aerospace and defense industry analyst with Frost & Sullivan.

"We’re used to drones getting information from their sensors and cameras and stuff, but there’s nothing that says they can’t get information from a data link, or use malware in a drone to corrupt a system," he said. "Military clients would want that."

The kind of hacks drone operators would be able to conduct aren't incredibly advanced, say industry analysts, but they do give users a whole other suite of options to gather "signals intelligence," or information scraped from electronic signals or networks.

Disabling a WiFi network — which would curb an enemy's ability to communicate or fly their own drones — or creating a false network called a "honeypot" — which would allow hackers to access devices that connect to it — require proximity but not a lot of technical skill.

"Putting it on a drone sounds science fiction, but these tools are something that any high school student with a little technical knowledge can use," Collins said.

That means they could be more attractive to military-industry buyers, analysts say.

"There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of beneficial economic applications that drones can do," said Colin Snow, chief executive and founder of Drone Analyst, a California-based civilian aircraft consultancy. "It replaces a lot of the dull, dirty and dangerous jobs."

And now, perhaps, they might also be able to help hack into your computer.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/08/04/hacked-e-mails-boeing-wants-its-drones-to-hack-computers-from-the-sky/

FBI begins investigation of Clinton e-mail server security







Less than two weeks after a pair of Inspectors General referred several unsecured transmissions of classified data to the Department of Justice, the FBI has begun an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s e-mail server. One obvious problem, of course, is that the server has reportedly been wiped clean, although no independent investigator has yet to confirm that. Instead, the FBI has started its investigation by contacting the support team that managed it for Hillary, the Washington Post reports, and they also want to know more about David Kendall’s thumb drive too:

The FBI has begun looking into the security of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private e-mail setup, contacting in the past week a Denver-based technology firm that helped manage the unusual system, according to two government officials.

Also last week, the FBI contacted Clinton’s lawyer, David Ken­dall, with questions about the security of a thumb drive in his possession that contains copies of work e-mails Clinton sent during her time as secretary of state.

The FBI’s interest in Clinton’s e-mail system comes after the intelligence community’s inspector general referred the issue to the Justice Department in July. Intelligence officials expressed concern that some sensitive information was not in the government’s possession and could be “compromised.” The referral did not accuse Clinton of any wrongdoing, and the two officials said Tuesday that the FBI was not targeting her.

The Post’s Carol Leonig, Rosalind Helderman, and Tom Hamburger advance the Clintonemail server story in a few intriguing ways. First, it turns out that the server itself was repurposed from Hillary’s 2008 presidential primary campaign. Needless to say, that raises all sorts of questions about the possibilities that hackers had already made inroads into the system before it was reused as an e-mail server. Campaign server systems don’t require the kind of security needed to protect diplomatic communications, for instance, and are much more connected to public traffic. It’s staggering that the Clintons — who were making between $15 million and $19 million a year prior to 2008 — did not think to spring for an entirely new server rather than just reuse some campaign equipment for this task.

Next, the security arrangements were, shall we say, less than optimal. At first, the Clintons set up an old computer of Bill’s to handle family communications, and the task of managing the system fell to one of Bill’s researcher and personal assistant, Justin Cooper. What were Cooper’s qualifications for this task?

Cooper had no security clearance and no particular expertise in safeguarding computers, according to three people briefed on the server setup.

Cooper declined to comment on this, probably wisely. The recycled personal system gave way to the recycled campaign system in 2009. Interestingly, the man who ran the system, Bryan Pagliano, was paid by Hillary’s Senate PAC until April 2009, months after taking office as Secretary of State. At that point, Pagliano went to work directly for State as an IT specialist, where his job included the maintenance of the Clintonemail server.

Now, this is very interesting. As a State Department IT employee, Pagliano almost certainly had a security clearance, and he would have known the rules and regulations regarding the transmission of secured material in electronic format. In fact, it’s likely that Pagliano would have had a positive duty to report any violations to State’s internal security apparatus. Did he do so? The Post notes that Pagliano had to be called repeatedly to deal with operational problems, so he would have had plenty of opportunities to ascertain if violations had occurred. If not, both State and Justice should be having very intense discussions with Pagliano … and his attorney.

The Post includes one last interesting detail. The Clintonemail server crashed in late 2012 during Hurricane Sandy, and the Clintons finally decided they needed a more professional system than their home-brew server. And they got one … in 2013, after Hillary left State.

At the very least, the Clintons clearly took much less care in protecting the nation’s classified material than they did with their own interests. It’s shameful, and that’s just the start of it.


http://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/05/fbi-begins-investigation-of-clinton-e-mail-server-security/

Video: Tapper asks Press Sec why nobody at White House has watched PP videos


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6SvNmsCvpg


Tapper: There’s nothing in these tapes that bothers you or anyone in the White House?

Earnest: Jake, I gotta tell you. These videos were released because of their shock value and there’s no doubt that what’s depicted on these videos is shocking. I know that based on the news reports I’ve read about the videos. I haven’t actually looked at them. But people who have looked at them have raised significant questions about whether or not these videos are credible. About whether or not they’ve been selectively edited in a way to grossly distort the position and the policies of Planned Parenthood.

Tapper: The whole video is put up on the website of this anti-abortion group that put them out. You don’t have to watch just the edited version. You can watch the whole version.

Earnest: I’m relying on news reports that I’ve seen on people who’ve taken a look at this and raised questions about the videos themselves and there’s no doubt that this is an organization that has targeted Planned Parenthood for some time so they clearly have an ideological ax to grind. What we know to be true is that Planned Parenthood provides regular health care for millions of Americans across the country. And Planned Parenthood is not able to use federal funds to perform abortions. That is written into the rules. That is a rule that this administration has not just followed, but that this administration has supported. So it’s clear that there are some ideological games being played here. And what this administration and this president has long fought for is protecting access for women for health care. And that’s exactly why we want to make sure there’s not an ideological effort to defund Planned Parenthood that provides those important health care services to women all across the country.

Tapper: Well, somebody at the White House should maybe watch the videos in full.


http://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/05/video-tapper-asks-press-sec-why-nobody-at-white-house-has-watched-pp-videos/