Your religious belief is 'warmly' welcomed here... No ban for you. How refreshing? I know right.

 

They did not miss it. They chose NOT to watch it

Nurse Admits It’s ‘Fun’ To Dissect Fetuses


The transcript accompanying the latest undercover Planned Parenthood video has an employee of the group admit she finds it “fun” to dissect fetuses for their organs and would “enjoy” the opportunity to do it on behalf of fetal tissue purchasers.

The exchange isn’t included in the 15-minute edited video released Tuesday by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), but is instead buried deep in the 119-page transcript accompanying it (a full-footage version of the video hasn’t been released yet). In the exchange, Melissa Farrell, director of research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, admits she and her co-worker would find it enjoyable if a tissue buyer wanted them to dissect dead fetuses for parts.

“It would be exciting too if you needed it dissected, because LaShonda and I are the most Curious George of the group,” Farrell says. “I know it’s sickening on some level, but it’s fun.”


http://dailycaller.com/2015/08/04/new-planned-parenthood-transcript-nurse-admits-its-fun-to-dissect-fetuses/#ixzz3ht4iYTgJ

FBI looking into the security of Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail setup





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 is not targeting her.

Kendall confirmed the contact, saying: “The government is seeking assurance about the storage of those materials. We are actively cooperating.”

A lawyer for the Denver company, Platte River Networks, declined to comment, as did multiple Justice Department officials.

The inquiries are bringing to light new information about Clinton’s use of the system and the lengths to which she went to install a private channel of communication outside government control — a setup that has emerged as a major issue in her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

For instance, the server installed in her Chappaqua, N.Y., home as she was preparing to take office as secretary of state was originally used by her first campaign for the presidency, in 2008, according to two people briefed on the setup. A staffer who was on the payroll of her political action committee set it up in her home, replacing a server that Clinton’s husband, former president Bill Clinton, had been using in the house.

The inquiries by the FBI follow concerns from government officials that potentially hundreds of e-mails that passed through Clinton’s private server contained classified or sensitive information. At this point, the probe is preliminary and is focused on ensuring the proper handling of classified material.


Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Clinton’s campaign, declined to comment on the FBI’s actions. He noted that Clinton has called repeatedly for the State Department to release her e-mails to the public, a process that is ongoing.

In a statement, Merrill said that Clinton “did not send nor receive any emails that were marked classified at the time. We want to ensure that appropriate procedures are followed as these emails are reviewed while not unduly delaying the release of her emails. We want that to happen as quickly and as transparently as possible.”

The controversy over Clinton’s e-mail dates to the summer of 2014, when, according to government officials, State Department lawyers realized they didn’t have access to some of her records as they prepared responses to congressional requests related to the 2012 attacks on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya.

In October 2014, the State Department asked four former secretaries to turn over e-mails in their private possession. In December, Clinton handed over 55,000 pages of e-mails, which she said represented all of her work-related correspondence. She has said she deleted all other e-mails she had sent or received as secretary of state, indicating that they dealt only with personal matters.

In March, the New York Times reported that Clinton exclusively used a private e-mail system. Clinton has said she handled her
e-mail this way for the convenience of carrying just one phone.

Critics say Clinton’s private server arrangement put her discussions with some aides outside the reach of government investigators, congressional committees and courts seeking public records from the State Department.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote a letter to FBI Director James B. Comey on July 24 asking him what steps his office had taken to ensure that classified information held on Kendall’s thumb drive, and once kept on Clinton’s server, was being properly secured. A State Department official said that once the agency identified classified material in the e-mails in May, it instructed Clinton’s lawyers on “appropriate measures for physically securing” the e-mails.

Responsibility for setting up and maintaining the server that handled personal e-mail communications for Bill and Hillary Clinton passed through a number of different hands, starting with Clinton staffers with limited training in computer security and eventually expanding to Platte River.

In 2008, responsibility for the system was held by Justin Cooper, a longtime aide to the former president who served as a personal assistant and helped research at least two of his books. 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.

“The system we used was set up for President Clinton’s office. And it had numerous safeguards. It was on property guarded by the Secret Service. And there were no security breaches,” Hillary Clinton said in March.

Those briefed on the server setup say the device installed for Bill Clinton was deemed too small for the addition of a sitting Cabinet official. Instead, a server that had been purchased for use by Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign was installed at the Chappaqua home.

With the new server came an additional specialist: Bryan Pagliano, who had worked as her campaign’s IT director. According to federal campaign finance records, Pagliano was paid by Clinton’s Senate leadership PAC through April 2009. The next month, he went to work for the State Department as an IT specialist, a department official said. The people briefed on the server indicated that he continued to act as the lead specialist responsible for it.

The e-mail system was not always reliable, these people said, with Pagliano summoned at various times to fix problems. Notably, the system crashed for days after New York was hit by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.

That led to new conversations about the need for better security, durability and a more professional setup, according to these people. In 2013, the Clintons hired Platte River to maintain the data.

Merrill, the Clinton spokesman, declined to respond to detailed questions about the setup of the server.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/fbi-looks-into-security-of-clintons-private-e-mail-setup/2015/08/04/2bdd85ec-3aae-11e5-8e98-115a3cf7d7ae_story.html

“To Save The Planet We Must Shrink The Economy; Curb White Population”







“Significant segments of our movement celebrate a “green new deal,” that will create an economic boom and new jobs while greening our economy. This is dangerous self-deception. Everyone needs living-wage jobs, but if the additional millions of job-holders produce more products and consume as the typical living-wage worker and their families do today, we’ll collectively emit even more carbon and make the problem worse.

Therefore we must couple the new green jobs with significantly reduced hours and substantially increased wages/salaries for all workers, including professionals. These workers and their families must spend their increased funds and free time in a manner that does not produce more greenhouse gases. This complex of interactions won’t work without careful planning and re-education. We’ll make no progress if we create more consumers taking part in the throw-away society.

Progressive environmental activists are also reluctant to talk about population. We believe in sharing the world’s resources more equitably, but don’t calculate what that means as the global population approaches eight billion. The issue of population control has racist roots and a history of unequal practice. In addition, five hundred million relatively affluent North American and Western European whites produce 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, while billions of people of color in the third world have tiny carbon footprints. While masses of people living in poverty are not responsible for global warming, increasing their level of consumption to that enjoyed in the “developed world” will have a profoundly negative impact on the world’s carbon footprint.”


http://peoplesworld.org/the-way-to-save-the-planet-shrink-the-economy/


-------------------------------------
Finally. Some honesty. Again, the ones proposing the cleansing seem to always forget themselves, their own family, and keep breeding more of their own... While pushing for the elimination of their neighbors...

Yep.

In the weeks leading up to a critical annual U.S. report on human trafficking that publicly shames the world’s worst offenders, human rights experts at the State Department concluded that trafficking conditions hadn’t improved in Malaysia and Cuba. And in China, they found, things had grown worse.

The State Department’s senior political staff saw it differently — and they prevailed.

A Reuters examination, based on interviews with more than a dozen sources in Washington and foreign capitals, shows that the government office set up to independently grade global efforts to fight human trafficking was repeatedly overruled by senior American diplomats and pressured into inflating assessments of 14 strategically important countries in this year’s Trafficking in Persons report.

In all, analysts in the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons - or J/TIP, as it’s known within the U.S. government — disagreed with U.S. diplomatic bureaus on ratings for 17 countries, the sources said.

The analysts, who are specialists in assessing efforts to combat modern slavery - such as the illegal trade in humans for forced labor or prostitution - won only three of those disputes, the worst ratio in the 15-year history of the unit, according to the sources.

As a result, not only Malaysia, Cuba and China, but countries such as India, Uzbekistan and Mexico, wound up with better grades than the State Department’s human-rights experts wanted to give them, the sources said. (Graphic looking at some of the key decisions here: reut.rs/1gF2Wz5)

Of the three disputes J/TIP won, the most prominent was Thailand, which has faced scrutiny over forced labor at sea and the trafficking of Rohingya Muslims through its southern jungles. Diplomats had sought to upgrade it to so-called “Tier 2 Watch List” status. It remains on “Tier 3” - the rating for countries with the worst human-trafficking records.

The number of rejected recommendations suggests a degree of intervention not previously known by diplomats in a report that can lead to sanctions and is the basis for many countries’ anti-trafficking policies. This year, local embassies and other constituencies within the department were able to block some of the toughest grades.

State Department officials say the ratings are not politicized. “As is always the case, final decisions are reached only after rigorous analysis and discussion between the TIP office, relevant regional bureaus and senior State Department leaders,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said in response to queries by Reuters.

Still, by the time the report was released on July 27, Malaysia and Cuba were both removed from the "Tier 3" blacklist, even though the State Department’s own trafficking experts believed neither had made notable improvements, according to the sources.

The Malaysian upgrade, which was highly criticized by human rights groups, could smooth the way for an ambitious proposed U.S.-led free-trade deal with the Southeast Asian nation and 11 other countries.

Ending Communist-ruled Cuba’s 12 years on the report’s blacklist came as the two nations reopened embassies on each other’s soil following their historic détente over the past eight months.

And for China, the experts’ recommendation to downgrade it to the worst ranking, Tier 3, was overruled despite the report’s conclusion that Beijing did not undertake increased anti-trafficking efforts.

That would have put China alongside the likes of Syria and North Korea, regarded by the United Nations as among the world’s worst human right abusers.

Typically, J/TIP wins more than half of what officials call “disputes” with diplomatic sections of the State Department, according to people familiar with the process.

“Certainly we have never seen that kind of an outcome,” said one U.S. official with direct knowledge of the department.

ABILITY TO EMBARRASS

The Trafficking in Persons report, which evaluated 188 countries and territories this year, calls itself the world’s most comprehensive resource of governmental anti-human trafficking efforts. Rights groups mostly agree.

It organizes countries into tiers based on trafficking records: Tier 1 for nations that meet minimum U.S. standards; Tier 2 for those making significant efforts to meet those standards; Tier 2 "Watch List" for those that deserve special scrutiny; and Tier 3 for countries that fail to comply with the minimum U.S. standards and are not making significant efforts.

While a Tier 3 ranking can trigger sanctions limiting access to aid from the United States, the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank, such action is frequently waived.

The real power is its ability to embarrass countries into action. Many countries aggressively lobby U.S. embassies to try to avoid sliding into the Tier 3 category. Four straight years on the Tier 2 Watch List triggers an automatic downgrade to Tier 3 unless a country earns a waiver or an upgrade.

The leverage has brought some success, including pressuring Switzerland to close loopholes that allowed the prostitution of minors and prompting the Dominican Republic to convict more child trafficking offenders.

President Barack Obama has called the fight against human trafficking “one of the great human rights causes of our time” and has pledged the United States “will continue to lead it.”

But the office set up in 2001 by a congressional mandate to spearhead that effort is increasingly struggling to publish independent assessments of the most diplomatically important countries, the sources said.

The rejection of so many recommendations could strengthen calls by some lawmakers to investigate how the report is compiled.  After Reuters on July 8 reported on the plans to upgrade Malaysia, 160 members of the U.S. House and 18 U.S. senators wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry urging him to keep Malaysia in Tier 3, based on its trafficking record. They questioned whether the upgrade was politically motivated.

Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat, has threatened to call for a Senate hearing and an inspector general to investigate if top State Department officials removed Malaysia from the lowest tier for political reasons.

The final decision on disputed rankings this year was made in meetings attended by some of the State Department’s most powerful diplomats, including Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman and Kerry’s Chief of Staff, Jonathan Finer, according to the sources.

Sarah Sewall, who oversees J/TIP as Undersecretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy and Human Rights, presented the experts’ recommendations, the sources said.  The State Department declined to make any of those officials available for comment.

“NO, NO, NO”

The unprecedented degree of discord over this trafficking report began to become clear after Reuters early last month revealed plans to upgrade Malaysia from the lowest Tier 3 rank to Tier 2 Watch List.

The improved ranking came in a year in which Malaysian authorities discovered dozens of suspected mass migrant graves and human rights groups reported continued forced labor in the nation’s lucrative palm oil, construction and electronics industries. As recently as April, the U.S. ambassador to Malaysia, Joseph Yun, urged the country to take prosecution of human trafficking violations more seriously.

U.S. officials have denied that political considerations influenced Malaysia’s rankings.

“No, no, no,” said Sewall, when asked by reporters last Monday whether Malaysia was upgraded to facilitate trade negotiations. She said the decision was based on how Malaysia was dealing with trafficking.

Representative Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican who authored a 2000 law that led to the creation of J/TIP, said in an interview that the office’s authority is being undermined by the president’s agenda. “It’s so politicized,” he said.

If Malaysia had remained on Tier 3, it would have posed a potential barrier to Obama's proposed trade pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. That deal is a crucial part of his pivot to Asia policy. Congress approved legislation in June giving Obama expanded trade negotiating powers but prohibiting deals with Tier 3 countries such as, at that time, Malaysia.

Congressional sources and current and former State Department officials said experts in the J/TIP office had recommended keeping Malaysia on Tier 3, highlighting a drop in human-trafficking convictions in the country to three last year from nine in 2013. They said, according to the sources, that some of Malaysia’s efforts to end forced labor amounted to promises rather than action.

The analysts also clashed over Cuba’s record with the State Department’s Western Hemisphere Affairs Bureau, whose view took precedence in the final report.

Human rights groups and people with knowledge of the negotiations over the rankings said an unearned upgrade for Cuba, especially at a time of intense attention due to the historic diplomatic thaw between Washington and Havana, could undermine the integrity of the report.

Cuba had been on the “border line” for an upgrade in recent years, a former State Department official said. And although Cuba ended up with an upgrade, the final report remained highly critical, citing concerns about Cuba’s failure to deal with a degree of alleged forced labor in medical missions that Havana sends to developing countries.

China was another source of friction. J/TIP’s analysts called for downgrading China, the world’s second-biggest economy, to Tier 3, criticizing Beijing for failing to follow through on a promise to abolish its “re-education through labor” system and to adequately protect trafficking victims from neighboring countries such as North Korea. The final report put China on Tier 2 Watch List.

SHOWING DEFERENCE

But the candor of J/TIP can run afoul of other important diplomatic priorities, particularly in countries beset by instability or corruption where U.S. diplomats are trying to build relationships. That leads every year to sometimes contentious back-and-forth over the rankings with far-flung embassies and regional bureaus – the diplomatic centers of gravity at the State Department.

“There is supposed to be some deference to the expertise of the office,” said Mark Lagon, J/TIP’s ambassador-at-large from 2007 to 2009 and now president of Freedom House, an advocacy group in Washington. If the office is now losing more disputes over rankings than it is winning, that would be “an unfortunate thing,” he said.

Most U.S. diplomats are reluctant to openly strike back at critics inside and outside of the administration who accuse them of letting politics trump human rights, the sources said.

But privately, some diplomats say that J/TIP staffers should avoid acting like “purists” and keep sight of broader U.S. interests, including maintaining open channels with authoritarian governments to push for reform and forging trade deals that could lift people out of poverty.

From the start, J/TIP has tried to be impartial. It is based in a building a few blocks away from State Department, adding to the sense of two separate identities and cultures.

But establishing genuine independence has been difficult. At first, the heads of regional bureaus, representing the business and political interests of U.S. embassies, would join the J/TIP team around a table and have almost an equal say in deciding country rankings in the final report.

John Miller, a former Republican congressman from Washington state named by President George W. Bush to head the bureau from 2002 to 2006, overhauled that structure.

“I said ‘no way’,” Miller said in an interview. By 2004, decisions on how to rank countries were made by his office. Diplomats who objected could appeal to then deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage. “He rarely overruled me,” said Miller. Armitage, who is no longer in a government job, did not respond to a request for comment sent through his office.

Laura Lederer, who helped set the office up as senior human trafficking adviser from 2002 to 2007, said its job was “to assess and rate countries solely on their progress in addressing the prevention of trafficking, the prosecution of traffickers, and protection and assistance of victims.”

But officials who worked in the office over the past 15 years acknowledge that countries with sensitive diplomatic or trade relationships with the United States sometimes received special treatment following pressure from local embassies and other constituencies within the department.

One such country is Mexico – a key trading partner whose cooperation is also needed against drug trafficking and illegal immigration. It was kept at Tier 2 despite the anti-trafficking unit’s call for a worse grade, according to officials in Washington and Mexico City.

The controversy over this year’s report comes at a time when J/TIP lacks a congressionally confirmed leader.

The prior chief, ambassador-at-Large Luis CdeBaca, left in November of last year. His deputy, Alison Friedman, then resigned to join a non-profit anti-slavery organization. And then it took until mid-July for Obama to nominate Georgia federal prosecutor Susan Coppedge as the next ambassador-at-large.

The lack of a director can increase the unit’s exposure to political influence, said Lederer.

Some say the perceived hit to the integrity of the 2015 report could do lasting damage.

“It only takes one year of this kind of really deleterious political effect to kill its credibility,”  said Mark Taylor, a former senior coordinator for reports and political affairs at J/TIP from 2003 to 2013.


http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/04/us-usa-humantrafficking-disputes-special-idUSKCN0Q821Y20150804

Can you tell us what their solution is about? Their videos are either short but vague, or very long.

Boy, was I wrong about Donald Trump. Here’s why.

By Chris Cillizza



Donald Trump is now doubling the rest of the Republican field in the average of the last five national polls. And polling out of early states like New Hampshire puts him in the pole position in those places too.

All of which makes having written a piece on June 17 headlined, "Why no one should take Donald Trump seriously, in one very simple chart" that argued why, well, no one should take Donald Trump seriously, pretty embarrassing. Not to mention wrong.

In case your detective work is at "True Detective" season 2 levels -- for non-show watchers, that means not so good -- I am the person who wrote that piece dismissing The Donald as even a semi-serious candidate for the presidency. My reasoning was pretty straightforward: Trump was regarded incredibly negatively by Republican voters. Twenty-three percent of GOP voters had a favorable opinion of Trump in a May Washington Post-ABC News poll, while 65 percent viewed him negatively. Eleven percent of Republicans felt strongly favorably toward Trump; 43 percent felt strongly negatively.

At the time, I wrote this:

You cannot and do not win anything when your numbers look like Trump's. I can't say it any more clearly than that. There's nothing you can say or do -- not that Trump would ever even consider going on an image rehabilitation tour -- to change how people feel about you. Republicans know Trump. And they really, really don't like him.

And then, opinions about Trump among Republicans totally flipped.

That same Post-ABC poll that showed Trump at 23/65 in his favorable/unfavorable ratings among Republicans in May suddenly revealed an absolutely unprecedented change in Trump's favor in July. In that latter (and later) poll, 57 percent of Republicans viewed Trump favorably, while 40 percent regarded him unfavorably.

That same sort of change was happening in other polls too. In June, a Fox News poll showed that almost six in 10 Republicans (59 percent) would never vote for Trump under any circumstances. In a Fox News survey released Monday night, that number was down to 33 percent. It's not great that one in three Republicans say they would never vote for you. But, it's a whole hell of a lot better than if 60 percent said it.

Why did I miss Trump's appeal so badly? Simply put: I had NEVER EVER seen a reversal in how people perceive a candidate who is as well known as Trump -- much less a reversal in such a short period of time. I based my conclusion that Trump would never be a relevant player in the Republican primary fight on the ideas that once people 1) know you and 2) don't like you, you can't change those twin realities much.

That was 100 percent true. Until Donald Trump proved it (and me) wrong.

Point taken. Never say "never" in politics. Thanks for reminding me of that old adage, Donald.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/08/04/boy-was-i-wrong-about-donald-trump-heres-why/

Did I say "Lion"? Sorry about that...
-----------------------------------------------------


Children stand among a crowd of laughing men as depraved Islamic State militants throw a man accused of being gay from the top of a building in northern Iraq.

Shocking new photographs show the man, who is blindfolded and has his hands tied behind his back, pushed off the top of a silo.

It is the latest proof of ISIS’ ambition to hunt down and execute anyone they believe is gay.




http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3184744/ISIS-fighters-throw-man-building-Iraq-gay.html#ixzz3hqV2opUr

Venezuelan President Blames Socialism’s Failures On America…






Socialist Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is blaming a United States conspiracy for a supermarket riot over the weekend that left one 21-year-old man dead–a man witnesses say was shot to death by Venezuela’s Bolivarian National Guard.

A mob attacked a supermarket warehouse in San Félix, Bolívar, on Friday, attempting to tear down the walls of a warehouse and acquire basic food items, such as milk and flour. Video shows a crowd of dozens organizing in front of the building and attempting to break through, with Bolivarian National Guard troops attempting to violently disperse the crowd. When police finally managed to subdue the crowd, 60 people were arrested, and 21-year-old Gustavo Patinez Gómez was dead of a gunshot wound to the chest.

The Venezuelan government has prohibited the use of mobile devices in supermarkets, following a wave of social media coverage of how empty most Venezuelan supermarkets are, boasting an abundance of snacks and cookies but no vegetable oil, laundry detergent, or diapers. While there is no official law on paper banning Venezuelans from using mobile devices in supermarkets, videos uploaded to YouTube show that government workers do confiscate telephones in supermarkets if someone attempts to record footage of empty store shelves.


http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/08/03/venezuelan-president-blames-us-for-supermarket-riot-that-left-one-dead/

Yesterday, Democrats voted to force you to fund baby killers


Since Day One of the new Planned Parenthood scandal, Democrats have gone to the walls to defend the nation’s most prolific killer of human beings. For two examples from just yesterday: only two Senate Democrats voted for a bill that would shift Planned Parenthood’s federal funding to other organizations. And only days after she called the Planned Parenthood fetal harvesting videos “disturbing,” Hillary Clinton ran an ad that proclaimed defunding the abortion giant is “a full-on assault on women’s health…”

Meanwhile, Obama spokesman Josh Earnest has twice admitted that his comments about the scandal are parroted from Planned Parenthood.

And just what are Democrats (and some Republicans) using the power of government to make you pay for? Nothing less than death, destruction, and bad economics.

First, the obvious: Planned Parenthood is a prolific killer of people. More than 327,000 of them, officially, last year, and even more through “contraceptives” that are actually abortifacients.

Second, and nearly as obvious: Monday’s vote was a show vote that highlighted how the American people are funding Planned Parenthood’s lawbreaking. Whether a congressional investigation finds the sales of fetal parts were done illegally, it is very clear that illegal partial-birth abortions are being committed to get complete limbs and organs, and it is likewise clear that the style of abortion is modified to get complete baby parts — which is also illegal.

This is in addition to Planned Parenthood’s willingness to break state reporting laws when it comes to using rape victims and sex slaves for profit.


http://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/04/yesterday-democrats-voted-to-keep-making-you-fund-law-breaking-economy-distorting-baby-killers/

Federal court strikes down “ag-gag” law, protects undercover journalism



The ACLU, PETA, and the Animal Legal Defense Fund won a major First Amendment case yesterday — and it should delight pro-life activists. The state of Idaho passed a law forbidding the use of undercover and other secret surveillance for journalistic purposes, a protection of the dairy and meat industries that had suffered public-relations disasters at the hands of exposés conducted by animal-rights activists. A federal judge overturned the law yesterday, ruling it a violation of free speech. Boise Weekly celebrated the win, and noted its own risks under the “ag-gag” law:

In April 2011, Boise Weekly visited a Jerome livestock auction as part of our award-winning investigation where we discovered high levels of drugs found in cattle linked to Idaho dairies (BW, News, “Got Milk? Got Drugs? Got Both?” April 6, 2011).

But auction officials weren’t too pleased with our presence—going so far as to manhandle our photographer and call us “terrorists.” But if a 2014 measure pushed through the Idaho Legislature and signed into law by Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter had been in effect at the time, we would have faced up to a year behind bars and fines of up to $5,000. …

And in a ruling issued Monday by B. Lynn Winmill, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for Idaho, the court found that the State’s argument in favor of the law was “narrowly tailored to protect private property” and “the State completely ignores that food production is not a private matter.”

“The remedy for misleading speech, or speech we do not like, is more speech, not enforced silence,” wrote Winmill.”The Court finds that [the Ag-Gag law] violates the First Amendment.”

The Chief Judge also wrote that, “Although the State may not agree with the message certain groups seek to convey about Idaho’s agricultural production facilities, such as releasing secretly-recorded videos of animal abuse to the Internet and calling for boycotts, it cannot deny such groups equal protection of the laws in their exercise of their right to free speech.”


These “ag-gag” restrictions have been proposed in several states, but only passed into law in a few, including Iowa and Utah in 2012. They are a relatively new phenomenon, pushed along undoubtedly by the low-cost barrier to entry for the kind of covert videography required. As I wrote earlier today, broadcasters have used the undercover-infiltration model for decades, but now activists can easily conduct similar investigations — and have.

The ACLU expresses its delight over the ruling:

The statue [sic] criminalizes undercover investigations that document animal welfare, worker safety, and food safety violations at an “agricultural production facility,” thus “gagging” speech that is critical of industrial agriculture, including speech that advances significant public interests in protecting Idahoans’ safety. Under this law, journalists, workers, activists, and members of the public can be convicted for documenting animal cruelty or life-threatening safety violations. The court ruled that this statute violates the First Amendment by suppressing speech that criticizes factory farms and was motivated by unconstitutional animus against animal advocates—which is a violation of the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Undercover video and photography has exposed numerous shocking practices that are “industry standards.” These pervasive, systematic procedures include routine mutilation, including debeaking birds with electrically heated blades and castrating male animals by slicing open their scrotum and ripping their testicles out without pain relief or anesthesia and intensive confinement—where animals are literally unable to turn around for months on end. Exposes have also detailed the sickening farming conditions resulting in contaminated meat products—posing serious health risks to the public—and life threatening conditions for farm workers.


That brings us to the pro-life cause. In San Francisco, a federal judge has placed a prior restraint on exactly the same kind of speech. The Center for Medical Progress conducted undercover investigations into Planned Parenthood, StemExpress, and the National Abortion Federation (among others, possibly) that “exposed numerous shocking practices” that are apparently “industry standards.” Judge William Orrick issued a temporary restraining order blocking that speech largely on the basis of the non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) that CMP’s investigators signed to gain access to industry meetings and officials. However, most employers require new hires to sign an NDA, even those gaining employment in order to expose illegal or abusive practices. They’re generally meaningless when used in this manner, and more so when it comes to whistleblowing. Orrick is reaching on this TRO.

Since this decision came at the district court, it carries no formal precedential weight — yet. If the state chooses to appeal this ruling, and they will have to do so to continue enforcement of its ag-gag law, an appellate court will have the opportunity to establish a precedent by upholding this ruling, and it would be shocking if it did not. That would come in the same appellate district as California (9th), which means a precedent here would pertain to federal courts in San Francisco. The only question might be which case gets to the 9th Circuit first, but the outcome wouldn’t likely change in any case.

So here’s an exit question, to borrow the phrase from my esteemed co-blogger: When will the ACLU take up CMP’s case in San Francisco? I’d guess that will happen at roughly the same time that media outlets file amicus briefs on behalf of CMP to protect undercover journalism, which I predict will roughly be … never.



http://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/04/federal-court-strikes-down-ag-gag-law-protects-undercover-journalism/

There was nothing wrong with your analogy

 

Liberal "Celebrity" on Donald Trump: “If You Kick Every Latino Out of Country, Then Who Is Going to Clean Your Toilet?”





Kelly Osbourne stepped into it on "The View" Tuesday, challenging Donald Trump's statement about Mexicans and asking if he has his way ... who will clean his toilet?

Osbourne quipped, "If you kick every Latino out of this country, then who is going to be cleaning your toilet, Donald Trump?"

Rosie Perez challenged Kelly, who immediately tried to clarify. Rosie tweeted after the show, "My apologizes @KellyOsbourne, I took your point wrong - #TrumpLatinos. My Bad. You're heart is so pure and righteous. I adore you."


http://www.tmz.com/2015/08/04/kelly-osbourne-the-view-donald-trump-latinos/



----------------------------------
Of course her heart is so pure and righteous...

 

What goes around comes around, my friends.
http://www.vh1.com/news/45787/kelly-osbourne-backlash-latino-comment-karma-giuliana-rancic/

Hmm... No wonder you love him, him and all of his 57 states...