4 Marines Dead in Shooting Attack at Tennessee Navy Facility

July 16, 2015 By Editor Leave a Comment

BREAKING NEWS: Four Marines were reportedly killed Thursday in one of two attacks at U.S. Navy facilities in Chattanooga, Tenn., and at least one shooter was dead.

The Marines were killed by a gunman who opened fire at a Naval Reserves Operations Center on Amnicola Highway, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Marilyn Hutcheson, who works at Binswanger Glass just across the street from the Naval Reserve Center on Amnicola Highway, said she heard a barrage of gunfire around 11 a.m.

“It was rapid fire, like pow pow pow pow pow, so quickly” – Marilyn Hutcheson, a witness

“I couldn’t even begin to tell you how many,” she said. “It was rapid fire, like pow pow pow pow pow, so quickly. The next thing I knew, there were police cars coming from every direction.”

The names of the Marines who were reportedly shot were not immediately released, and government officials did not confirm the report.

The shooting there came around the same time that a gunman in a silver Mustang opened fire at a Navy recruiting office in a strip mall some seven miles away, on Lee’s Highway. The shooter stopped in front of the recruiting facility, shot at the building and drove off, said Brian Lepley, a spokesman with the U.S. Army Recruiting Command in Fort Knox, Ky.

Lepley said the recruiting center on Old Lee Highway has recruiting services for all four branches of the military. The Army recruiters told Lepley they have evacuated and are safe. He has no information about recruiters for the other branches.

It was not immediately known if the shootings were related, or what prompted them.

A federal law enforcement official told Fox News that officers from FBI’s Knoxville field office responded to the scene.

The Knoxville News Sentinel reported that there is a heavy police presence at the , along with five ambulances.

“There has been several [shootings] at several different locations. It’s a fluid situation,” John Harmon, a spokesman for the Tennessee Highway Patrol, told Reuters. It is not known if the shootings are related.

Lee University in Cleveland, which is about 30 minutes from the shooting, was also on lockdown

The Federal Aviation Administration said it was holding departing flights at their gates in Chattanooga, with delays projected to last 15 minutes or less.

“This is a very, very terrible situation,” Andy Berke, the city’s mayor told reporters. “I’m very concerned about what’s going on. We need to figure out how to handle it.”

FoxNews.com/The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Was Mitt Romney Right About Russia (and everything else)?

July 10, 2015 By Editor Leave a Comment

Ever since the United States got involved in the dispute over Ukraine — and ended up in a challenging place with Russia over it — people have been quietly reviving statements that former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney made during the 2012 election about his foreign policy concerns. When Russia decided they’d like to annex Crimea this week, the dig into the Romney archive began anew, with consensus from his co-partiers — and from some people who would never admit to liking him — generally falling along the lines of “oh my dear lord, Mitt was right all along!”

Campaign statements about the Affordable Care Act and general gloom and doom were also recycled. One Web site went so far as to ask if Romney was the next Nostradamus. Actually, more than one Web site crowned him the seer of our time.

Is the hype true?

Let us go through some of Romney’s old statements, and add some context to the conversation.

First of all, Russia I indicated is a geopolitical foe. Not… excuse me. It’s a geopolitical foe, and I said in the same — in the same paragraph I said, and Iran is the greatest national security threat we face. Russia does continue to battle us in the U.N. time and time again. I have clear eyes on this. I’m not going to wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to Russia, or Mr. Putin.

This is the Romney prediction that has been getting the most press lately. Over the course of the 2012 campaign, Romney repeatedly called Russia “our number one geopolitical foe.” However, when Obama pushed back against that statement in the Oct. 22, 2012, debate, Romney downgraded Russia to a geopolitical foe, as David Weigel pointed out last September. Romney decided in the end that he wasn’t set on casting the former Soviet Union as the big baddie of his hypothetical administration. He just saw Russia as a foe for all geopolitical generations.

Was Romney right?

With the conflict in Ukraine escalating and President Vladimir Putin actively annexing Crimea, many people are citing Romney’s “number one geopolitical foe” line with vindication. The fact that the New York Times editorial board wrote at the time that such rhetoric was “either a shocking lack of knowledge about international affairs or just craven politics” made Romney’s supporters even more gleeful. Last September, a Romney friend told Buzzfeed’s McKay Coppins, “Everyone thought, Oh my goodness that is so clever and Mitt’s caught in the Cold War and doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Well guess what. With all of these foreign policy initiatives — Syria, Iran, [Edward] Snowden — who’s out there causing problems for America? It’s Putin and the Russians.” Media outlets on the left and right have mentioned Romney’s remarks as “just about right” over the past year. Romney has begun “I told you so-ing” too. In Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, he wrote,

In virtually every foreign-affairs crisis we have faced these past five years, there was a point when America had good choices and good options. There was a juncture when America had the potential to influence events. But we failed to act at the propitious point; that moment having passed, we were left without acceptable options. In foreign affairs as in life, there is, as Shakespeare had it, “a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.”

The difference between the foreign policy school Romney belongs to and the Obama administration is that one group has no problem seeing the world through Cold War-colored glasses, while the other would like to think we’ve moved past that mindset. As the president said in late February, “our approach in the United States is not to see these as some Cold-War chessboard in which we’re in competition with Russia.”

President Barack Obama (R) listens as Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney speaks during the first presidential debate in Denver, October 3, 2012. REUTERS/Jim Bourg (UNITED STATES – Tags: POLITICS ELECTIONS USA PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION)

Unfortunately, the rest of the world has no problem viewing political strategy as a big board game, which is why the White House failed to predict how Russia would act with Syria and Ukraine and Edward Snowden in advance. As Stephen Walt put it earlier this month,”Did we really think that power politics was no longer relevant in the 21st century, and that the spread of democracy, free markets, rule of law, and all that other good stuff meant that other states were no longer willing to defend their own security interests?

The unfortunate and unrelenting old-school nature of international politics is what Mitt Romney was most right about.

…

“You know that if the president were to be elected, he would still be unable to work with members of Congress. He’s ignored them, he’s attacked them, he’s blamed them. And of course the debt ceiling is going to come up again, and then there’d be a threat of shutdown or default. And that of course chills the economy, puts more people out of work.”

Was Romney right?

Yes. The debt ceiling came up. More than once. There was a shutdown. There was a threat of default. Obama still doesn’t get along with Congress. However, this was not a claim that required clairvoyance. Obama and Congress had already faced off in a series of debt-ceiling showdowns. Nothing suggested that future fights would end any differently. Romney was right, but so was everyone else watching.

Romney’s point also completely skips the part where Congress ignored, attacked and blamed Obama. During the January 2013 debt-ceiling fight, 45 percent of Americans said they’d blame Republicans in Congress if a shutdown happened. When a shutdown finally did happen, they blamed Republicans too. Why? Because congressional Republicans wanted things — like raising entitlement reform — in return for raising the debt ceiling. If President Romney attacked Senate Democrats who tried to raise the minimum wage in return for raising the debt ceiling, he’d probably think such a characterization of the political landscape was unfair. Blaming the president for near default might be a good campaign throwaway line, but it misses some of the complexity of the situation — like most campaign lines (see Obama’s questionable campaign line below).

If the president’s re-elected, Obamacare will be fully installed. In my view that’s going to mean a whole different way of life for people who counted on the insurance plan they had in the past. Many will lose it.

Was Romney right?

Romney said this during the Oct. 3, 2012, presidential debate. The first part is unequivocally true; Obama was re-elected, and House Republicans have been unable to get the Senate to sign on to their many attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act. President Obama countered Romney’s second statement — that many Americans would lose their insurance plans — from 2009 up until this November, by saying that people who liked their health-care plan, could keep their health-care plan.

Except everyone knew this wasn’t quite true. Administration estimates from July 2010 showed that “40 to 67 percent” of private health-insurance customers would have health-care plans ineligible for the grandfather clause Obama had been talking about. That percentage works out to about 7 to 12 million people, as Sarah Kliff reported last year. That’s a relatively small fraction of the entire population of Americans who have health insurance, but it is plenty large enough to provide anecdotal horror stories for the media until the end of time.

Most of the customers who received cancellation notices after October 1, 2013, had health-insurance plans that didn’t meet Affordable Care Act standards. The Obama administration contends that now these people will be able to get better insurance, and in most cases tax subsidies to stave off price increases. Customers who bought a plan after Obamacare was enacted, or who have health-care plans that have changed their deductibles, co-pays or benefits since the Affordable Care Act was enacted, also received cancellation notices.

At the end of 2013, Politifact called “if you like your plan, you can keep it,” the lie of the year.

Obama has repeatedly apologized for not peppering his health-insurance marketing with more nuance. The White House is allowing states to stave off cancellations until 2016 if they want, but for the near future, damage is done. If the Affordable Care Act ends up working well a few years from now, its early framing fumbles — and real fumbles — may fade. For now, however, the flubs will hover over any health-care debate.

In many cases, the people who lost insurance are going to have better and cheaper insurance. But, as a University of Michigan professor told Bloomberg last year, “the first thing you get that affects you personally is that you’ve lost your health insurance. That approach is going to backfire politically.”

It has, and many conservatives have gone back to Romney’s many quotes on Obamacare cancellations to strike up a “told-you-so” choir. Yes, Romney was right. But the Obama administration also knew he was right. They just did a very bad job of telling the public of why cancellations might be a good thing for many people.

By Jaime Fuller

Nobel Prize-winning Scientist Says Obama is ‘Dead Wrong’ on Global Warming

July 8, 2015 By Editor Leave a Comment

In 2008, Dr. Ivar Giaever joined over 70 Nobel Science Laureates in endorsing Barack Obama for president, but seven years later the Nobel Prize winner now stands against the president on global warming.

“I would say that basically global warming is a non-problem,” Giaever, who won the Nobel for physics in 1973, told an audience at the Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting earlier this month.

Giaever ridiculed Obama for stating that “no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.” The physicist called it a “ridiculous statement” and that Obama “gets bad advice” when it comes to global warming.

“I say this to Obama: Excuse me, Mr. President, but you’re wrong. Dead wrong,” Giaever said.

Giaever was a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s School of Engineering and School of Science and received the Nobel Prize for physics for his work on quantum tunneling. Giaever said he was “horrified” about the science surrounding global warming when he conducted research on the subject in 2012.

Ironically, just four years earlier he signed a letter with more than 70 other Nobel winners saying the “country urgently needs a visionary leader” and that “Senator Barack Obama is such a leader, and we urge you to join us in supporting him.”

But by 2011, Giaever left the American Physical Society because it officially stated that “the evidence is incontrovertible … [g]lobal warming is occurring.” The Society also pushed for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“Global warming really has become a new religion,” Giaever said. “Because you cannot discuss it. It’s not proper. It is like the Catholic Church.”

Giaever argued that there’s been no global warming for the last 17 years or so (based on satellite records), weather hasn’t gotten more extreme and that global temperature has only slightly risen — and that’s based on data being “fiddled” with by scientists, he said.

“When you have a theory and the theory does not agree with the experiment then you have to cut out the theory. You were wrong with the theory,” Giaever said.

By Michael Bastasch

[H/T Climate Depot]

Follow Michael on Twitter

CNN Anchor Alive Thanks to Second Amendment

July 8, 2015 By Editor Leave a Comment

The United States of America is a great country. You can debate absolutely anything, whether or not it has merit, and whether or not it’s any of your business.

But guns? There’s nothing to debate. Throw out all the numbers and expert opinions. I’ve got your expert right here, and it’s called EXPERIENCE.

Just before midnight June 30th, my husband, Chuck de Caro, and I and our Weimaraner were four days into an all-American, cross-country road trip. We’d just dined with a friend in Albuquerque and intended to hit historic Route 66, then stop for the night.

Realizing it was late and Route 66 is no fun in the dark, we stopped at a pet-friendly Motel 6. Chuck showered; I went to the car for dog food.

He was making wild passes with his gun. Finally he lunged at the briefcase in front of me, and headed for the door. For a second, I thought he’d leave. Instead, he opened fire on my husband.

The armed guard patrolling the second floor was engrossed in a phone conversation, instead of checking the parking lot.

I unlocked our door, picked up the food I’d placed at my feet and was assaulted by a jackass with a big, silver semi-automatic weapon.

He shoved me into the room. I was airborne and landed on the bed. He shut the door and stood behind it, gun on me, debating his next move.

He didn’t expect Chuck to open the bathroom door. My husband (Air Force Academy, U.S. Army Special Forces), said “What’s going on here?” and advanced into the room. Stark naked and dripping wet, he maneuvered himself in front of the small table between the beds, concealing two small .380 legal handguns we’d brought in from the car.

I moved around, we spoke to the assailant, kept him busy, offered him things, kept him from focusing. We felt he’d shoot when he’d gotten what he wanted. He was comfortable with the situation, had been there before.

I walked my purse to Chuck, talking about finding something inside. I reached behind Chuck and slipped a gun in, then handed it to him, asking if he could see anything that we might give the man. He said yes, wrapping his hand around the gun.

The assailant grew agitated as I again walked across the room, splitting his concentration. He was making wild passes with his gun. Finally he lunged at the briefcase in front of me, and headed for the door.

For a second, I thought he’d leave. Instead, he opened fire on my husband. Chuck returned fire, emptying his gun even as he was bleeding profusely.

Bottom line: Assailant DOA in the parking lot. My hero recovering from five gunshot wounds. We both are alive.

Now, ask me how I feel about the right to bear arms.

Here’s the truth:

1. Criminals will always have guns, this is not about them.

2. Americans have a constitutional right to bear arms. Humans have a right to defend themselves. If we didn’t have the Second Amendment, we would create it.

3. You can’t control everything; but if it makes you feel better, go with a simple law preventing violent offenders from buying firearms. Make it “violent” offenders rather than “white collar” offenders, or most of Capitol Hill won’t be allowed to own them.

4. Get a gun, get legal, be responsible, trust yourself. Don’t trust yourself? Then don’t carry. But for God’s sake then, shut the f**k up about it, because that’s where your involvement ends.

Chuck and I were married one year ago, on the Fourth of July. Sure, we celebrated our first wedding anniversary in a hospital. But thanks to the Second Amendment, my crack-shot husband and the pistol he used, we were able to have a first anniversary.

By Lynne Russell / Lynne Russell is a former Headline News anchor and CNN correspondent.

CDC official calls Obama ‘Marxist,’ Says S. Border is Letting in Dem “Voters”

July 6, 2015 By Editor Leave a Comment

A federal health official dealing with the surge of illegal immigrants last year at the southern U.S. border ripped President Obama for the months-long crisis, calling him a “Marxist” and “the worst pres we have ever had,” according to newly released internal emails.

The emails, obtained and published by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, show a June 9, 2014, exchange between Centers for Disease Control and Prevention logistics specialist George Roark and agency public health adviser William Adams.

Roark begins by writing: “Unreal, no country in the world would allow this.”

Adams responds: “Well, in ten years or less, they’ll all be voting … Commander’s intent …”

Roark concludes: “It is very clear that is the case. This fellow is the worst pres we have ever had. He truly is ‘the amateur’ but a Marxist, too.”

Roark declined to talk to FoxNews.com on Monday, when reached by phone at the agency’s Atlanta headquarters. The CDC has yet to respond to a question about whether the agency addressed the email exchange with Roark or Adams, and whether either was reprimanded or punished.

Judicial Watch said it obtained the emails as part of an investigation into the CDC activating its Emergency Operations Center to deal with tens of thousands Central American immigrants, including many unaccompanied minors, trying to get into the United States at the Mexico border.

The center was opened to address concerns about the border-crossers’ health and the potential for them to bring contagious diseases and other illnesses into the country.

The Roark-Adams exchange was included in about 3,000 pages of emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, and more documents related to the Judicial Watch investigation are forthcoming, the group said Monday.

The U.S. law that gives some protection to illegal immigrants from non-bordering countries — and puts unaccompanied minors into the hands of the Department of Health and Human Services — was in fact signed by President George W. Bush in December 2008, days before Obama took office.

Judicial Watch also found in its investigation a June 18, 2014, email in which CDC intelligence analyst Daniel Bubacz said the situation that summer was the result of a “Leave No Child on the other Side of the Border Policy” — a reference to the controversial federal education policy known as No Child Left Behind.

FoxNews.com’s Joseph Weber contributed to this report.

Growing Dependence Day – The Return of King George

July 3, 2015 By Editor Leave a Comment

With the level of the federal deficit over $18,000,000,000 (trillions), the interest on which costs Americans the first $1,500,000,000 (billion) they earn every day, and the recent explosion of federal power over the citizens and the states as handed to U.S. socialists by the Supreme Court and the prolific pen of the Executive Order, the independence from government rule and tyranny sought by our Founders is all but neutralized. We and our children are indebted and imprisoned by design of a leftist attack on our country, and an Orwellian federal government spies on patriotic citizens and treats them like enemies while Islamic terrorists are welcomed into the White House and allowed to overrun territories recently liberated with the blood of thousands of Americans.

A polarization has occurred in the nation—as the left has chipped away at personal liberty and individual sovereignty over the past several decades; those who cherish freedom have finally begun to become more vocal in their resistance. But is it too little, too late?

The left has made tremendous inroads in their quest to replace King George with its own elitist panels, commissions and czars, and within the past years its inches of ground-winning have become feet.

In the name of laborer parity and elevating the ethnically or socially disadvantaged, the socialists and communists of the past century have robbed the people of the world of their birthright, established by the labor and sacrifice of their 18^th and 19^th Century forebears. In the name of pretended “fairness,” leftist forces have lowered the wealth and opportunities of everyone, rather than elevate the status of the less fortunate.

Look at any country where socialism and liberalism have penetrated the veil of liberty. Not one of them has improved the quality of life of their working people.

Where do we find the bottom half of earners in America? With all of the talk of the 1% and the 99% in this country, and the mindless chants of brain-dead occupiers in the streets, even an overtaxed economy like ours has rendered our own 99%, the 1% of the world. Nearly all of our poor live in good housing, have clean water and food aplenty (many suffer from obesity), a computer of some kind, and cell phones and cable television. They live better than the wealthy of most of the earth’s nations.

Additionally, the tremendous generosity and military might of Americans has been the salvation of billions of people around the world, whose leftist economies have left them with nothing but squalor, want and exposure to dictators and war lords (usually leftist tyrants).

We hear of the Tea Party these days, and the name is spoken with disdain by over half of the country, and almost all of the mainstream media. Does any of them actually recall where the term originated? Do they remember how an oppressive monarch imposed taxes that were hard to bear and intruded into the personal liberties of a hardworking people, and that those people finally decided that they would take no more and rose up in rebellion, starting with throwing British tea into the harbor?

No, sadly enough, most young adults these days are the products of a dumbing-down campaign launched by the left and its educational arm, the National Education Association. They have mush for brains and their education consists of nothing more than pop culture and global warming propaganda.

We have nearly come full circle. We have hundreds of millions dependent on government and its handouts, a White House dedicated to the overthrow of the Constitution, and a Supreme Court that has decreed that the people are to be taxed even for services they DO NOT purchase at the government’s command and that sodomy is the equivalent of traditional marriage.

King George is back, liberty has been strangled to near enslavement, and this time it will take more than a few muskets to rid us of the burgeoning oppression. America has not seen such dark times since the Civil War. I say the Civil War, because in all other wars the enemy was external. If we fail to immediately change our course, we will be irretrievably carried back under the oppression of dictatorship. We invite all liberty loving Americans to join the revolution, and to regain our independence from oppressive, centralized government.

PUBLIUS

San Francisco Woman Killer is Another Obama Turnstile Illegal

July 3, 2015 By Editor Leave a Comment

The man arrested in connection with the seemingly random killing of a woman who was out for a stroll with her father along the San Francisco waterfront is an illegal immigrant who previously had been deported five times, federal immigration officials say.

Further, Immigration and Customs Enforcement says San Francisco had him in their custody earlier this year but failed to notify ICE when he was released.

“DHS records indicate ICE lodged an immigration detainer on the subject at that time, requesting notification prior to his release so ICE officers could make arrangements to take custody. The detainer was not honored,” ICE said in a statement Friday afternoon.

Kathryn Steinle was killed Wednesday evening at Pier 14 — one of the busiest tourist destinations in the city.

Police said Thursday they arrested Francisco Sanchez in the shooting an hour after it occurred.

On Friday, ICE revealed their records indicate the individual has been previously deported five times, most recently in 2009, and is from Mexico.

“His criminal history includes seven prior felony convictions, four involving narcotics charges,” ICE said in a statement.

ICE briefly had him in their custody in March after he had served his latest sentence for “felony re-entry,” but turned him over to San Francisco police on an outstanding drug warrant. At this time, ICE issued the detainer — effectively asking that he be turned back over to ICE when San Francisco was finished with him.

But ICE was not notified. The incident is sure to renew criticism of San Francisco’s sanctuary city policies.

“Here’s a jurisdiction that’s not even honoring our detainer for someone who clearly is an egregious offender,” an ICE official told FoxNews.com.

ICE has since lodged another immigration detainer against the individual, though it’s unclear whether San Francisco will cooperate.

A representative with the police department has not yet responded to a request for comment from FoxNews.com.

Police Sgt. Michael Andraychak earlier said witnesses snapped photos of Sanchez immediately after the shooting and the images helped police make the arrest.

Liz Sullivan told the San Francisco Chronicle that her 32-year-old daughter turned to her father after she was shot and said she didn’t feel well before collapsing.

“She just kept saying, ‘Dad, help me, help me,'” Sullivan said. Her father reportedly tried to do CPR before she was rushed to the hospital.

The immigration detainer issued against the suspect earlier this year would have initiated the process of removing him from the U.S. once again.

“ICE places detainers on aliens arrested on criminal charges to ensure dangerous criminals are not released from prisons or jails into our communities,” ICE said in the statement. “The agency remains committed to working collaboratively with its law enforcement partners to ensure the public’s safety.”

FoxNews.com’s Adam Shaw and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Trump Bump: Why His Media War Against Offended Corporations is Boosting Him

July 3, 2015 By Editor Leave a Comment

The first time I interviewed Donald Trump, back in 1987, he said this:

“When I go up to New Hampshire — I’m not running for president, by the way — I get the best crowd, the best of everything in terms of reception.

“The politicians go up and get a moderate audience. I go up, and they’re scalping tickets. You heard that? They’re scalping tickets. Why? Because people don’t want to be ripped off, and this country is being ripped off. I think if I ran, I’d win.”

He has been honing this act for a long time.

Many pundits—some of them the same wiseguys who thought Trump would sink like a stone—are saying that he’s taken a beating over the last week. After all, NBC, Univision, Macy’s and Serta have all cut ties with him over his comments on Mexican immigrants.

Many people obviously found those comments offensive. But in purely political terms, this is helping Trump.

For one thing, he has dominated the campaign news cycle for a week, drawing more attention than all the other candidates combined. He has driven home his message with a spate of cable news interviews. (And—subtle plug here—The Donald will be talking about these issues Sunday on “Media Buzz.”)

Here’s what the media elite misses, and why he’s surged into second place in Fox and CNN polls. Trump portrays himself as a fighter, and that resonates with many voters. Trump casts himself as a straight talker, and voters like that. Trump markets himself as a non-politician in an era when the public is fed up with pols. He’s seen as tough on illegal immigration, which doesn’t hurt in a Republican primary.

The bombastic billionaire also strikes a populist note by going to war with big corporations.

And this just in: President Obama, in Tennessee, called for a smart legal immigration system “that doesn’t separate families but does focus on making sure that people who are dangerous, people who are, you know, gang-bangers, who are criminals that we’re deporting as quickly as possible.”

Gang-bangers? Trump’s version was more inelegant, but if the president is worried about Mexican gang-bangers, doesn’t it suggest the businessman had a point?

By now, most politicians would have softened or papered over the remarks about Mexican immigrants including such miscreants as rapists. But Trump has doubled and tripled down. He’s denounced NBC, sued Univision for $500 million and urged customers to boycott Macy’s. This dovetails nicely with his refrain about politicians being “all talk and no action.”

Meanwhile, the press has been prodding Trump’s Republican rivals to take him on. “His outlandish rhetoric and skill at occupying the national spotlight are also proving to be dangerously toxic for the GOP brand, which remains in the rehabilitation stage after losing the 2012 presidential race,” says a front-page Washington Post story.

CBS’s Nancy Cordes said Republican leaders “worry” that Trump’s rising polls “will just embolden him and further alienate the critical Hispanic vote.”

But why is this a Republican problem? Yes, the party has well-documented difficulties with Hispanic voters, but Trump is hardly an establishment Republican. He might be causing himself problems with Latinos, but why would that rub off on, for example, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio? The media often demand that all party members respond to one Republican’s controversial comments in a way that you rarely see with Democrats.

Still, some GOPers realized they could ride this wave. George Pataki, perhaps to remind people he’s running, called Trump’s comments “unacceptable.”

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez said “I think those are horrible things to say about anyone and any culture.”

Hillary hit Trump, but without naming him, while Jeb Bush limited himself to “I don’t agree with him. I think he’s wrong.”

The point is, they’re all responding to Donald Trump. And for the moment, he’s the guy driving the campaign narrative.

By Howard Kurtz

Poll: Voters Distrust Government; Obama Not Transparent

June 30, 2015 By Editor Leave a Comment

The nation’s upcoming birthday party could be awkward — as our relationship with Uncle Sam is on the rocks.

Most American voters distrust their government, are unsure their president is honest, and feel Barack Obama has made false claims about transparency in his administration.

The latest Fox News national poll finds that 61 percent don’t trust the federal government. That’s just one percentage point below the record high of 62 percent distrust in both 2013 and 2011. And it’s a reversal from 2002, soon after the 9/11 attacks, when a 54-percent majority trusted Uncle Sam and only 36 percent didn’t (June 2002).

Click to read the full poll results

Trust among Democrats has gone up since 2002, when George W. Bush was president. It was 47 percent then compared to 54 percent in the new poll.

Trust has precipitously dropped among independents (-32 points) and Republicans (-38 points) over that same time period. Among independents, 53 percent trusted the government in 2002, while 21 percent say the same now. For Republicans, trust was 63 percent then and it’s 25 percent now.

Meanwhile, voters continue to disagree with the administration’s repeated claim that it is the “most transparent administration in history.” Only 29 percent agree with that. Two-thirds say this isn’t the most open White House (67 percent). Last year, it was 28-68 percent (July 2014).

The reviews are far from glowing even among the president’s party faithful: 49 percent of Democrats say Obama is the most transparent, while 46 percent disagree.

Overall, 47 percent of voters think President Obama is honest and trustworthy, yet slightly more — 50 percent — say he isn’t. That’s almost identical to last year when it was 48-50 percent (July 2014).

Obama’s high honesty mark was in April 2009, when he had been in office about 100 days. At that time, 73 percent said he was honest and trustworthy and 22 percent disagreed.

Fully 94 percent of Democrats said Obama was honest and trustworthy in 2009. That’s down 14 points to 80 percent in the new poll. For independents, it’s a 32-point drop: 73 percent honest in 2009 and 41 percent now. Among Republicans: 43 percent said Obama was honest in 2009, while just 13 percent say the same today (-30 points).

The Fox News poll is based on landline and cell phone interviews with 1,005 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from June 21-23, 2015. The full poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

By Dana Blanton

SCOTUS Rules Against Obama’s EPA

June 29, 2015 By Editor Leave a Comment

In a major win for the energy industry, the Supreme Court ruled Monday against the Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to limit certain power plant emissions — saying the agency “unreasonably” failed to consider the cost of the regulations.

The rules curbing emissions of mercury and other hazardous air pollutants began to take effect in April. But the court said by a 5-4 vote Monday that the EPA failed to take their cost into account when the agency first decided to regulate the toxic emissions from coal- and oil-fired plants.

The challenge was brought by industry groups and 21 Republican-led states.

Writing for the court, Justice Antonin Scalia said it is not appropriate to impose billions of dollars of economic costs in return for a few dollars in health or environmental benefits.

“EPA must consider cost — including cost of compliance — before deciding whether regulation is appropriate and necessary,” the court said.

The case now goes back to lower courts for the EPA to decide how to account for costs.

The decision is a blow to the Obama administration, just days after the court delivered President Obama a major win by upholding his signature health care overhaul. The White House also celebrated Friday’s historic ruling legalizing gay marriage nationwide.

In the majority opinion on Monday, Scalia wrote that while the EPA decided to regulate power plants to improve public health and the environment, even the agency estimated it would cost power plants nearly $10 billion a year. “EPA refused to consider whether the costs of its decision outweighed the benefits. The Agency gave cost no thought at all, because it considered cost irrelevant to its initial decision to regulate,” Scalia wrote.

In this, he wrote that the EPA over-reached.

The EPA did factor in costs at a later stage when it wrote standards that are expected to reduce the toxic emissions by 90 percent. They were supposed to be fully in place next year. The issue was whether health risks are the only consideration under the Clean Air Act.

The EPA said in a statement it would review the decision and take “any appropriate next steps” when the review is complete. “EPA is disappointed that the Court did not uphold the rule, but this rule was issued more than three years ago, investments have been made and most plants are already well on their way to compliance,” EPA Press Secretary Melissa J. Harrison said.

She said that since the decision pertained to cost considerations — and not the agency’s overall Clean Air Act authority — “EPA remains committed to ensuring that appropriate standards are in place” to curb air pollution.

“The Court’s decision focuses on EPA’s initial finding that it was appropriate and necessary to regulate these emissions and not on the substance of the standards themselves,” she said, adding that for every dollar spent on reducing pollution under these rules, “the American public would see up to $9 in health benefits.”

But Republicans cheered the decision. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement she hopes the opinion leads to some “balance” in these environmental standards. “It is heartening to hear that the court has reined in the EPA, especially on the issue of the costs of regulation,” she said.

Scalia was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan said it was enough that the EPA considered costs at later stages of the process.

“Over more than a decade, EPA took costs into account at multiple stages and through multiple means as it set emissions limits for power plants,” Kagan said.

She was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.

The case is the latest in a string of attacks against the administration’s actions to use the Clean Air Act to rein in pollution from coal-burning power plants.

EPA is readying rules expected to be released sometime this summer aimed at curbing pollution from the plants that is linked to global warming. States have already challenged those rules even before they are final, and Congress is working on a bill that would allow states to opt out of any rules clamping down on heat-trapping carbon dioxide.

The legal and political challenges ahead could undermine U.S. efforts to inspire other countries to control their emissions, as they head into negotiations in Paris on a new international treaty later this year.

In the case of mercury, the costs of installing and operating equipment to remove the pollutants before they are dispersed into the air are hefty — $9.6 billion a year, the EPA found.

But the benefits are much greater, $37 billion to $90 billion annually, the agency said. The savings stem from the prevention of up to 11,000 deaths, 4,700 nonfatal heart attacks and 540,000 lost days of work, the EPA said. Mercury accumulates in fish and is especially dangerous to pregnant or breastfeeding women, and young children, because of concern that too much could harm a developing brain.

A disproportionate share of the 600 affected power plants, most of which burn coal, are in the South and upper Midwest.

FoxNews.com/The Associated Press contributed to this report.

LDS Church Publicly Defines Marriage as 1 Man, 1 Woman

June 27, 2015 By Editor Leave a Comment

In a statement released shortly after the Supreme Court’s shocking ruling extending rights of marriage to same-sex couples yesterday, the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints declared:

“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints acknowledges that following today’s ruling by the Supreme Court, same-sex marriages are now legal in the United States. The Court’s decision does not alter the Lord’s doctrine that marriage is a union between a man and a woman ordained by God. While showing respect for those who think differently, the Church will continue to teach and promote marriage between a man and a woman as a central part of our doctrine and practice.”

“The Church has outlined its doctrine and position on marriage in the document The Divine Institution of Marriage.”

The prior statement, The Divine Institution of Marriage, is reprinted in its entirety below:

The Divine Institution of Marriage

Introduction In 1995, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints published “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” which declares the following truths about marriage:We, the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children. . . .

The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity.[1]

Since the publication of that statement, there have been many challenges to the institution of marriage. Prominent among these challenges has been the recognition by several national governments and some states and provinces that same-sex marriage—formal unions between two individuals of the same gender—are the equivalent of traditional marriage. Yet God’s purposes for establishing marriage have not changed. One purpose of this document is to reaffirm the Church’s declaration that marriage is the lawful union of a man and a woman.

Another purpose is to reaffirm that the Church has a single, undeviating standard of sexual morality: intimate relations are acceptable to God only between a husband and a wife who are united in the bonds of matrimony.

A third purpose is to set forth the Church’s reasons for defending marriage between a man and a woman as an issue of moral imperative. The Church’s opposition to same-sex marriage derives from its doctrine and teachings, as well as from its concern about the consequences of same-sex marriage on religious freedom, society, families, and children.

A fourth purpose of this document is to reaffirm that Church members should address the issue of same-sex marriage with respect and civility and should treat all people with love and humanity.

The Vital Importance of Marriage

Marriage is sacred and was ordained of God from before the foundation of the world. Jesus Christ affirmed the divine origins of marriage: “Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?”[2]

From the beginning, the sacred nature of marriage was closely linked to the power of procreation. After creating Adam and Eve, God commanded them to “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth,”[3] and they brought forth children, forming the first family. Only a man and a woman together have the natural biological capacity to conceive children. This power of procreation—to create life and bring God’s spirit children into the world—is divinely given. Misuse of this power undermines the institution of the family.[4]

For millennia, strong families have served as the fundamental institution for transmitting to future generations the moral strengths, traditions, and values that sustain civilization. In 1948, the world’s nations issued the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, affirming that “the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society.”[5]

Marriage is far more than a contract between individuals to ratify their affections and provide for mutual obligations. Rather, marriage is a vital institution for rearing children and teaching them to become responsible adults. Throughout the ages, governments of all types have recognized marriage as essential in preserving social stability and perpetuating life. Regardless of whether marriages were performed as a religious rite or a civil ceremony, in almost every culture marriage has been protected and endorsed by governments primarily to preserve and foster the institution most central to rearing children and teaching them the moral values that undergird civilization.

It is true that some couples who marry will not have children, either by choice or because of infertility. The special status granted marriage is nevertheless closely linked to the inherent powers and responsibilities of procreation and to the innate differences between the genders. By contrast, same-sex marriage is an institution no longer linked to gender—to the biological realities and complementary natures of male and female. Its effect is to decouple marriage from its central role in creating life, nurturing time-honored values, and fostering family bonds across generations.

In recent decades, high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births have resulted in an exceptionally large number of single parents. Many of these single parents have raised exemplary children. Extensive studies have shown, however, that a husband and wife who are united in a loving, committed marriage generally provide the ideal environment for protecting, nurturing, and raising children.[6] This is in part because of the differing qualities and strengths that husbands and wives bring to the task by virtue of their gender. As an eminent academic on family life has written:

The burden of social science evidence supports the idea that gender differentiated parenting is important for human development and that the contribution of fathers to child rearing is unique and irreplaceable. . . . The complementarity of male and female parenting styles is striking and of enormous importance to a child’s overall development.[7]

In view of the close links that have long existed between marriage, procreation, gender, and parenting, same-sex marriage cannot be regarded simply as the granting of a new “right.” It is a far-reaching redefinition of the very nature of marriage itself. It marks a fundamental change in the institution of marriage in ways that are contrary to God’s purposes for His children and detrimental to the long-term interests of society.

Threats to Marriage and Family

Our modern era has seen traditional marriage and family—defined as a husband and wife with children in an intact marriage—come increasingly under assault, with deleterious consequences. In 2012, 40% of all births in the United States were to unwed mothers.[8] More than 50% of births to mothers under age 30 were out of wedlock. Further, the marriage rate has been declining since the 1980s. These trends do not bode well for the development of the rising generation.

A wide range of social ills has contributed to this weakening of marriage and family. These include divorce, cohabitation, non-marital childbearing, pornography, the erosion of fidelity in marriage, abortion, the strains of unemployment and poverty, and many other social phenomena. The Church has a long history of speaking out on these issues and seeking to minister to our members with regard to them. The focus of this document on same-sex marriage is not intended to minimize these long-standing issues.

More recently, the movement to promote same-sex marriage as an inherent or constitutional right has gained notable ground in recent years. Court rulings, legislative actions, and referenda have legalized same-sex marriage in a number of nations, states, and jurisdictions. In response, societal and religious leaders of many persuasions and faiths have made the case that redefining marriage in this way will further weaken the institution over time, resulting in negative consequences for both adults and children.[9]

A large number of people around the world recognize the crucial role that traditional marriage has played and must continue to play if children and families are to be protected and moral values propagated. Because the issue of same-sex marriage strikes at the very heart of the family and has the potential for great impact upon the welfare of children, the Church unequivocally affirms that marriage should remain the lawful union of a man and a woman.

Unchanging Standards of Morality

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that God has established clear standards of morality for His children, who are accountable before Him for their behavior. Such standards cannot be changed by the reasoning, emotions, personal interests, or opinions of mortal beings.[10] Without the higher authority of God, as revealed in scripture and by His prophets, secular society will flounder and drift.

Many advocates of same-sex marriage argue that traditional standards of sexual morality have changed and that “tolerance” requires that these new standards be recognized and codified in law. If tolerance is defined as showing kindness for others and respect for differing viewpoints, it is an important value in all democratic societies. But as Elder Dallin H. Oaks has observed, “Tolerance does not require abandoning one’s standards or one’s opinions on political or public policy choices. Tolerance is a way of reacting to diversity, not a command to insulate it from examination.”[11]

The Savior taught that we should love the sinner without condoning the sin. In the case of the woman taken in adultery, He treated her kindly but exhorted her to “sin no more.”[12] His example manifested the highest love possible.

In addition to using the argument of tolerance to advocate redefining marriage, proponents have advanced the argument of “equality before the law.” No mortal law, however, can override or nullify the moral standards established by God. Nor can the laws of men change the natural, innate differences between the genders or deny the close biological and social link between procreation and marriage.

How Would Same-Sex Marriage Affect Religious Freedom?

As governments have legalized same-sex marriage as a civil right, they have also enforced a wide variety of other policies to ensure there is no discrimination against same-sex couples. These policies have placed serious burdens on individual conscience and on religious organizations.[13]

Same-sex marriage and anti-discrimination laws have already spawned legal collisions with the rights of free speech and of action based on religious beliefs. For example, advocates and government officials in certain states have challenged the long-held right of religious adoption agencies to follow their religious beliefs and place children only in homes with both a mother and a father. As a result, Catholic Charities in several states was forced to give up its adoption services rather than be forced to place children with same-sex couples.[14]

In the United States, the First Amendment right of free exercise of religion is coming under pressure from proponents of same-sex marriage. Some of these proponents advocate that tax exemptions and benefits should be withdrawn from any religious organization that does not accept such marriages.[15] The First Amendment may protect clergy from being forced to perform same-sex marriages, but other people of faith have faced and likely will continue to face legal pressures and sanctions. The same will happen with religiously affiliated institutions and educational systems. For example, a Georgia counselor contracted by the Centers for Disease Control was fired after an investigation into her decision to refer someone in a same-sex relationship to another counselor. In New Jersey, a ministry lost its tax-exempt status for denying a lesbian couple the use of its pavilion for their wedding. New Mexico’s Human Rights Commission prosecuted a commercial photographer for refusing to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony. When public schools in Massachusetts began teaching students about same-sex civil marriage, a Court of Appeals ruled that parents had no right to exempt their students.^{^[16]}

Similar limitations on religious freedom have already become the social and legal reality in several European nations, and the European Parliament has recommended that laws protecting the status of same-sex couples be made uniform across the European Union.[17] Where same-sex marriage becomes a recognized civil right, it inevitably conflicts with the rights of believers, and religious freedom is diminished.

How Would Same-Sex Marriage Affect Society?

The possible diminishing of religious freedom is not the only societal implication of legalizing same-sex marriage. Perhaps the most common argument that proponents of same-sex marriage make is that it is essentially harmless and will not affect the institution of traditional heterosexual marriage in any way. “It won’t affect your marriage, so why should you care?” is the common refrain. While it may be true that allowing same-sex marriage will not immediately and directly affect existing marriages, the real question is how it will affect society as a whole over time, including the rising generation and future generations.

In addition to undermining and diluting the sacred nature of marriage, legalizing same-sex marriage brings many practical implications in the sphere of public policy that will be of concern to parents and society.[18] When a government legalizes same-sex marriage as a civil right, it will almost certainly enforce a wide variety of other policies to enforce this. The implications of these policies are critical to understanding the seriousness of condoning same-sex marriage.

The all-important question of public policy must be: what environment is best for the child and for the rising generation? While some same-sex couples will obtain guardianship over children, traditional marriage provides the most solid and well-established social identity for children.[19] It increases the likelihood that they will be able to form a clear gender identity, with sexuality closely linked to both love and procreation. By contrast, the legal recognition of same-sex marriage may, over time, erode the social identity, gender development, and moral character of children. No dialogue on this issue can be complete without taking into account the long-term consequences for children.

As one example of how children will be adversely affected, the establishment of same-sex marriage as a civil right will inevitably entail changes in school curricula. When the state says that same-sex marriages are equivalent to heterosexual marriages, public school administrators will feel obligated to support this claim.[20] This has already happened in many jurisdictions, where from elementary school through high school, children are taught that marriage can be defined as a legal union between two adults of any gender, that the definition of family is fluid, and in some cases that consensual sexual relations are morally neutral.[21] In addition, in many areas, schools are not required to notify parents of this curriculum or to give families the opportunity to opt out.[22] These developments are already causing clashes between the agenda of secular school systems and the right of parents to teach their children deeply held standards of morality.

Throughout history, the family has served as an essential bulwark of individual liberty. The walls of a home provide a defense against detrimental social influences and the sometimes overreaching powers of government. In the absence of abuse or neglect, government does not have the right to intervene in the rearing and moral education of children in the home. Strong, independent families are vital for political and religious freedom.

Civility and Kindness

The Church acknowledges that same-sex marriage and the issues surrounding it can be divisive and hurtful. As Church members strive to protect marriage between a man and a woman, they should show respect, civility, and kindness toward others who have different points of view.

The Church has advocated for legal protection for same-sex couples regarding “hospitalization and medical care, fair housing and employment rights, or probate rights, so long as these do not infringe on the integrity of the traditional family or the constitutional rights of churches.”[23] In Salt Lake City, for example, the Church supported ordinances to protect gay residents from discrimination in housing and employment.[24]

The Church’s affirmation of marriage as being between a man and a woman “neither constitutes nor condones any kind of hostility toward gays and lesbians.”[25] Church members are to treat all people with love and humanity. They may express genuine love and kindness toward a gay or lesbian family member, friend, or other person without condoning any redefinition of marriage.

Conclusion

Strong, stable families, headed by a father and mother, are the anchor of society. When marriage is undermined by gender confusion and by distortions of its God-given meaning, the rising generation of children and youth will find it increasingly difficult to develop their natural identities as men or women. Some will find it more difficult to engage in wholesome courtships, form stable marriages, and raise another generation imbued with moral strength and purpose.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, along with many other churches, organizations, and individuals, will continue to defend the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman, because it is a compelling moral issue of profound importance to our religion and to the future of society.

The final words in the Church’s proclamation on the family are an admonition to the world from the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles: “We call upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.”[26]

This document is a revised and updated version of “The Divine Institution of Marriage,” first published by the Church in 2008 (.pdf file).

References

[1] “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” Ensign, Nov. 1995, 102.

[2] Matthew 19:4–5.

[3] Genesis 1:28.

[4] See M. Russell Ballard, “What Matters Most Is What Lasts Longest,” Ensign, Nov. 2005, 41–44.

[5] United Nations, “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” General Assembly Resolution 217 A (III), Dec. 10, 1948.

[6] David Blankenhorn, Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Maggie Gallagher and Joshua K. Baker, “Do Moms and Dads Matter? Evidence from the Social Sciences on Family Structure and the Best Interests of the Child,” Margins Law Journal 4:161 (2004); Mark Regnerus, “How Different Are the Adult Children of Parents Who Have Same-Sex Relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study,” Social Science Research 41:4 (July 2012): 752–70; Regnerus, “Parental Same-Sex Relationships, Family Instability, and Subsequent Life Outcomes for Adult Children: Answering the Critics of the New Family Structures Study with Additional Analyses,” Social Science Research 41:6 (Nov. 2012): 1367–77; W. B. Wilcox, J. R. Anderson, W. Doherty, et al., Why Marriage Matters, Third Edition: Thirty Conclusions from the Social Sciences (New York: Institute for American Values and National Marriage Project, 2011); M. E. Scott, L. F. DeRose, L. H. Lippman, and E. Cook, Two, One, or No Parents? Children’s Living Arrangements and Educational Outcomes around the World (Washington, D.C.: Child Trends, 2013; worldfamilymap.org/2013/articles/essay/two-one-or-no-parents); Andrew J. Cherlin, The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009).

[7] David Popenoe, Life Without Father (New York: The Free Press, 1996), 146.

[8] See J. A. Martin, B. E. Hamilton, M. J. K. Osterman, et al. Births: Final Data for 2012. National Vital Statistics Reports; vol. 62, no. 9 (Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics, 2013).

[9] See Sherif Girgis, “Check Your Blind Spot: What Is Marriage?” Marriage, Feb. 15, 2013; thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/02/7942/; Lynn Wardle, “The Attack on Marriage as the Union of a Man and a Woman,” North Dakota Law Review, vol. 83 (June 2008): 1364–92; David Blankenhorn, The Future of Marriage (2007); Lynn Wardle, ed., What’s the Harm? Does Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage Really Harm Individuals, Families, or Society? (2008); R.R. Reno, “The Future of Marriage,” First Things, Jan. 2013, 3–4; Richard Neuhaus, “Disingenuousness and Clarity,” On the Square, May 30, 2008; firstthings.com/onthesquare/2008/05/disingenuousness-and-clarity.

[10] See Dallin H. Oaks, “No Other Gods,” Ensign, Nov. 2013, 72–75.

[11] Dallin H. Oaks, “Weightier Matters,” Ensign, Jan. 2001, 17.

[12] John 8:11.

[13] See Douglas Laycock, Anthony R. Picarello Jr., and Robin F. Wilson, eds., Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty, Emerging Conflicts (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008).

[14] See usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/fortnight-for-freedom/upload/Catholic-Adoption-Services.pdf

[15] See Jonathan Turley, “An Unholy Union: Same-Sex Marriage and the Use of Governmental Programs to Penalize Religious Groups with Unpopular Practices,” in Laycock, Picarello, and Wilson, eds., Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts, 59–76.

[16] Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George, What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense (New York and London: Encounter Books, 2012), 62–64.

[17] See Roger Trigg, Equality, Freedom, and Religion (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); The Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe, Report 2012 (Vienna, Austria, 2013); “European Parliament Resolution on Homophobia in Europe,” adopted Jan. 18, 2006.

[18] See Girgis, Anderson, and George, What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense.

[19] See endnote 6.

[20] Charles Russo, “Same-Sex Marriage and Public School Curricula: Preserving Parental Rights to Direct the Education of Their Children,” University of Dayton Law Review, vol. 32 (Spring 2007): 361–84.

[21] Gerry Shih, “Clashes Pit Parents vs. Gay-Friendly Curriculums in Schools,” The New York Times, Mar. 3, 2011, page A21A; John Smoot, “Children Need Our Marriage Tradition,” Public Discourse, June 13, 2013; thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/06/10344/; Challenging Homophobia and Heterosexism: A K-12 Curriculum Resource Guide, Toronto District School Board (2011).

[22] Parker v. Hurley, 514 F. 3d 87 (1st Cir. 2008); Fields v. Palmdale School District, 427 F.3d 1197 (9th Cir. 2005).

[23] mormonnewsroom.org/article/church-responds-to-same-sex-marriage-votes.

[24] See mormonnewsroom.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/news-releases-stories/statement-given-to-salt-lake-city-council-on-nondiscrimination-ordinances.

[25] mormonnewsroom.org/article/church-responds-to-same-sex-marriage-votes.

[26] “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” 102.

Supreme Court Upholds Gay Marriage in all 50 States

June 26, 2015 By Editor Leave a Comment

The Supreme Court ruled Friday that same-sex couples have a right to marry nationwide, in a historic decision that invalidates gay marriage bans in more than a dozen states.

Gay and lesbian couples already can marry in 36 states and the District of Columbia. But in a 5-4 ruling, the court held that the 14th Amendment requires states to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples and to recognize such marriages performed in other states.

The ruling means the remaining 14 states that did not allow such unions, in the South and Midwest, will have to stop enforcing their bans.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, just as he did in the court’s previous three major gay rights cases dating back to 1996.

“No union is more profound than marriage,” Kennedy wrote, joined by the court’s four more liberal justices.

He continued: “Under the Constitution, same-sex couples seek in marriage the same legal treatment as opposite-sex couples, and it would disparage their choices and diminish their personhood to deny them this right.”

The outcome is the culmination of two decades of Supreme Court litigation over marriage, and gay rights generally. Cheers broke out outside the Supreme Court when the decision was announced.

President Obama tweeted: “Today is a big step in our march toward equality.”

But other justices argued that the court should not be able to order states to change their marriage definition. Chief Justice John Roberts, in a dissent joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, called the ruling an “extraordinary step.”

“Many people will rejoice at this decision, and I begrudge none their celebration. But for those who believe in a government of laws, not of men, the majority’s approach is deeply disheartening,” they wrote.

“The majority’s decision is an act of will, not legal judgment.”

Each of the four dissenting justices also wrote a separate dissent.

The ruling will not take effect immediately because the court gives the losing side roughly three weeks to ask for reconsideration. But some state officials and county clerks might decide there is little risk in issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

The cases before the court involved laws from Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee that define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Those states have not allowed same-sex couples to marry within their borders and they also have refused to recognize valid marriages from elsewhere. They previously had their bans upheld by a federal appeals court.

Just two years ago, the Supreme Court struck down part of the federal anti-gay marriage law that denied a range of government benefits to legally married same-sex couples.

There are an estimated 390,000 married same-sex couples in the United States, according to UCLA’s Williams Institute, which tracks the demographics of gay and lesbian Americans. Another 70,000 couples living in states that do not currently permit them to wed would get married in the next three years, the institute says. Roughly 1 million same-sex couples, married and unmarried, live together in the United States, the institute says.

The Obama administration backed the right of same-sex couples to marry. The Justice Department’s decision to stop defending the federal anti-marriage law in 2011 was an important moment for gay rights and Obama declared his support for same-sex marriage in 2012.

FoxNews.com/The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Trump Announces White House Bid

June 16, 2015 By Editor Leave a Comment

New York real estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump on Tuesday declared himself a candidate for the Republican nomination for president, launching his against-the-odds campaign after teasing one for years.

“I am officially running for president of the United States,” Trump said from inside his signature Trump Towers in midtown Manhattan. “We are going to make our country great again.”

Trump flirted with a White House run in 2012 but ultimately did not enter the race. Though Trump is a first-time political candidate, he has become an influential voice in conservative political circles. He has spoken at political events in early-voting states, and makes frequent appearances on Fox News, among other outlets.

Trump has for months shown signs that he intended get into the White House race this time.

He has formed a presidential exploratory committee and has made numerous visits this year to early-voting states Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Also, he has remained competitive in early polling.

Trump said he will file a financial statement showing his net worth is $8.73 billion, though several of his ventures have declared bankruptcy. All president candidates are required to file a financial disclosure.

The 69-year-old Trump joins the field of 11 other GOP candidates, with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker expected to enter the race in mid-July and several other hopefuls still considering. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush announced his bid a day earlier.

Most polls have Trump in the top 10 in the field of Republican candidates and hopefuls, which would qualify him for the nationally televised GOP primary debate in August hosted by Fox News.

His unabashed businesses success will likely position him as a candidate riding a strong free-market, pro-business platform. It would also set him apart from candidates pitching a populist message, and trying to make themselves relatable to middle-class voters.

Trump, who was born in Queens, inherited his father’s successful real estate company in 1972 and has since grown and diversified the business to include Trump Entertainment Resorts as well as a clothing and fragrance line.

Trump’s extravagant lifestyle and brash manner is frequently on display during episodes of his long-running ABC TV show, “The Apprentice,” which the network in February approved for another season.

Trump, popularly known as “the Donald,” married for the third time in 2005 and has a total five children and seven grandchildren. He attended the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.

FoxNews.com

Rachel Dolezal, Fake Black NAACP Leader Quits

June 15, 2015 By Editor Leave a Comment

SPOKANE, Wash. – The leader of the NAACP in Spokane is facing calls to step aside after her parents said the 37-year-old activist falsely portrayed herself as black for years.

Rachel Dolezal canceled a chapter meeting Monday where she was expected to speak about the furor sparked over her racial identity. But other members of the organization said they still planned to gather Monday evening.

Dolezal sent out an email Sunday canceling the monthly membership meeting “due to the need to continue discussion with regional and national NAACP leaders.”

Shortly after her announcement, the head of the chapter’s executive committee, Lawrence Burnley, questioned whether Dolezal had the right to arbitrarily cancel the meeting, KREM-TV in Spokane (http://is.gd/sdOyLy ) reported, quoting an email thread mailed to NAACP members.

“I don’t see any language in the bylaws that empowers you, or any one member, to arbitrarily cancel/postpone tomorrow’s meeting,” Burnley wrote in his email Sunday.

Some are planning a demonstration Monday night calling for Dolezal to step down.

Kitara Johnson, a member of the chapter, organized an online petition calling for Dolezal to take a leave of absence.

“It’s not about race, it’s about integrity,” she said. “If you’re a leader, you have to have integrity. She clearly lacks integrity. The other piece is credibility.”

Johnson said she and others plan to peacefully protest outside Monday’s membership meeting, but they will not attend the meeting.

Attempts to reach Dolezal by telephone were unsuccessful Sunday.

Dolezal was elected president of the local NAACP chapter about six months ago.

The NAACP issued a statement Friday supporting Dolezal, who has been a longtime figure in Spokane’s human-rights community and teaches African studies to college students.

Ruthanne Dolezal, Rachel Dolezal’s mother, said the family’s ancestry is Czech, Swedish and German, with a trace of Native American heritage. She produced a copy of her daughter’s Montana birth certificate listing herself and Larry Dolezal as Rachel’s parents.

The city of Spokane is investigating whether Dolezal lied about her ethnicity when she applied to be on the police board. Police on Friday said they were suspending investigations into racial-harassment complaints filed by Dolezal, including one from earlier this year in which she said she received hate mail at her office.

Dolezal had said in a statement Friday that she would address the controversy at Monday’s meeting.

“As you probably know by now, there are questions and assumptions swirling in national and global news about my family, my race, my credibility, and the NAACP,” her statement said.

Associated Press

Obama Gets Handed Stinging Loss on Trade Deal

June 12, 2015 By Editor Leave a Comment

President Obama suffered a major defeat to his Pacific Rim free trade initiative Friday as House Democrats helped derail a key presidential priority despite his last-minute, personal plea on Capitol Hill.

The House voted 302 to 126 to sink a measure to grant financial aid to displaced workers, fracturing hopes at the White House that Congress would grant Obama fast-track trade authority to complete an accord with 11 other Pacific Rim nations.

“I will be voting to slow down fast-track,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on the floor moments before the vote, after keeping her intentions private for months. “Today we have an opportunity to slow down. Whatever the deal is with other countries, we want a better deal for American workers.”

The dramatic defeat could sink the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a sweeping free trade and regulatory pact that Obama has called central to his economic agenda at home and his foreign policy strategy in Asia. Obama’s loss came after a months-long lobbying blitz in which the president invested significant personal credibility and political capital.

Republican leaders, who had backed the president’s trade initiative, pleaded with their colleagues to support the deal or risk watching the United States lose economic ground in Asia.

“The world is watching us right now,” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said before the vote.

Obama had rushed to Capitol Hill for the first time in nearly two years Friday morning to make a last-ditch plea to an emergency meeting of the Democratic caucus. The president urged members to vote with their conscience and “play it straight,” urging them to support the financial package for displaced workers, which Democrats have long supported.

“I don’t think you ever nail anything down around here,” Obama told reporters on his way out of the Capitol. “It’s always moving.”

But anti-trade Democrats pushed hard to block the financial aid plan, knowing that its defeat would also torpedo a companion measure to grant Obama fast-track authority to complete the TPP. That bill could not move forward after the aid package was defeated.

Lawmakers said the White House has pushed harder on trade than any legislative issue since the health-care reform effort during his first year. After keeping trade on the back burner, Obama joined forces with business-friendly Republicans after the midterm elections in pursuit of a rare bipartisan deal and launched a fierce effort to win support from his usual Democratic allies over the intense opposition of labor unions.

“The president and his counselors understand that this is a legacy vote for his second term,” Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), who supported the fast-track bill said Thursday. “It’s a philosophical battle, a political battle and an economic battle. The president finds himself in the crossfire with the base.”

Obama made an impassioned plea during his visit to Capitol Hill. But he appeared not to have changed many minds among fellow Democrats. After the president departed, two anti-trade Democrats, Louise Slaughter of New York and Gene Green of Texas, came out of the meeting determined to oppose Obama.

“I don’t want this trade bill to go through,” Slaughter, who represents the economically depressed area of Rochester, said of the fast-track bill.

Several members said Obama took no questions and received applause on several occasions when discussing his previous efforts to deliver on Democratic priorities.

The debate among Democrats has at times been raw and personal, and it has exposed old divisions on trade as the party attempts to coalesce around a common agenda ahead of the 2016 campaign to select Obama’s successor. Other Democratic leaders, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), have questioned Obama’s commitment to workers and the middle class, while union officials accused the president of marginalizing them.

“I would ask that you not mischaracterize our positions and views — even in the heat of a legislative battle,” AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka wrote this week in a letter to the president. “You have repeatedly isolated and marginalized labor and unions.”

White House officials had cast the dispute with labor as a difference of opinion that does not reflect a deeper divide within a party focused on stemming the nation’s growing wealth divide. Obama has framed the 12-nation TPP as a way to lock in rules to ensure U.S. economic primacy in the fast-growing Asian-Pacific region against increasing competition from China. In the president’s view, that would benefit American workers as the world’s economy shifts toward high-tech industries in which the United States maintains an advantage.

A failure on fast-track could lend weight to Chinese claims that the United States does not have staying power in Asia.

The president’s pitch was met with widespread skepticism among Democrats who blame past trade deals for killing jobs and depressing wages for Americans in traditional manufacturing work.

Inside the West Wing, Obama’s advisers bet that pushing forward on trade made the most sense, politically and practically, after Republicans won control of both chambers of Congress last November. Some Democrats have suggested that the president should have opened his final two years with legislative efforts on tax reform and infrastructure bills.

But fundamental, and perhaps irreconcilable, differences remain between the parties on those fronts. A failed year-long bid to pass comprehensive immigration reform had left Washington as polarized as ever, especially after Obama moved forward with a series of high-profile executive actions late last year.

In the scrambled politics of trade, Obama would quickly win the backing of his GOP adversaries and face what aides believed would be better odds to win over his own party on an ambitious, though risky, legislative gambit. But unlike in 2009 and 2010, when Obama relied on Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to help wrestle the Affordable Care Act through Congress with Democratic majorities on a party-line vote, the president would have to essentially go it alone on trade.

The effort, by all accounts, was exhaustive.

Obama phoned and met with key Democratic lawmakers, promised to campaign for them against primary challenges and invited them aboard Air Force One. He traveled to Oregon in May to give a trade speech at Nike in the home state of Sen. Ron Wyden (D), who offered crucial support to win passage of the fast-track legislation in the Senate.

Cabinet secretaries have fanned out across the capital, and Secretary of State John F. Kerry visited a Boeing plant in Seattle to tout the merits of the trade pact. U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman has been a “nonstop” presence on Capitol Hill, said Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Tex.), a prime target of the administration who has not disclosed his position on the trade bill.

On Thursday night, Obama made a surprise visit to the annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity at Nationals Park to woo Pelosi and other Democrats.

“The president is personally engaged on this,” Wyden said Thursday. “He’s all in.”

Despite the intensive campaign, however, Obama struggled to convince more than a sliver of House Democrats to back his push for the fast-track authority. The legislation would have allowed him to submit the trade pact to Congress for a vote in a specified timetable without lawmakers being able to amend it.

The White House has called such powers crucial to persuading the other 11 nations involved in the TPP negotiations to put their best offers on the table in the final round of talks this summer.

But opponents said they feared that approving the fast-track measure would be akin to ratifying a pact that is still being negotiated and whose terms have been kept largely hidden from public view. (Lawmakers are permitted to read draft sections of the agreement in a classified setting and are prevented from talking about specifics in public.)

On Thursday, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and other Obama aides huddled with House Democrats in a bid to alleviate objections.

But at each turn, the administration was met by a determined coalition of opponents, made up of labor unions, environmental groups and progressive Democrats. Led by Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.), the coalition has been meeting for two years with individual Democrats, and with small groups, to pressure them to oppose a fast-track bill.

Trumka met with the same House Democrats on Thursday soon after the White House officials had departed.

By David Nakamura and Paul Kane. Mike DeBonis and Kelsey Snell contributed to this report.

NJ Supreme Court Upholds Gov. Christie on Pension Modifications

June 9, 2015 By Editor Leave a Comment

New Jersey’s top court has sided with Gov. Chris Christie in a fight with public worker unions over pension funds.

The state Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned a lower-court judge’s order that told the Republican governor and the Democrat-controlled Legislature to work out a way to increase pension contributions for the current fiscal year. That ends June 30.

In a 5-2 ruling, the court says there wasn’t an enforceable contract to force the full payment.

One of Christie’s signature achievements as governor has been a 2011 deal on pensions for public workers. Employees had to pay more and the government was locked into making up for years of skipped or reduced contributions.

Christie reduced the state’s payment last year amid a surprise tax revenue shortfall.

Associated Press

Obama Blisters Supreme Court for Its Audacity to Even Review Obamacare

June 8, 2015 By Editor Leave a Comment

President Obama bluntly challenged the Supreme Court over a pending ruling on the validity of ObamaCare subsidies, complaining Monday that the court should never have taken up the case — and warning that a ruling against subsidies would be a “twisted interpretation” of the law.

The president and his administration’s legal team for months have fought the Affordable Care Act court challenge, which is over whether people who enrolled through the federal HealthCare.gov are entitled to subsidies.

But the president’s comments on Monday, during a press conference on the sidelines of the G-7 summit in Germany, were perhaps his toughest to date. He strongly suggested the court would be running afoul of established legal guidance if it rules against the administration, and took the rare step of saying the court should have stayed out of this fight.

“This should be an easy case. Frankly, it probably shouldn’t even have been taken up,” Obama said.

The administration has argued in court that the subsidies are valid through both state-run exchanges and exchanges run through HealthCare.gov. Foes argue that the Affordable Care Act stipulates subsidies are only intended for those buying insurance on state-run exchanges.

The court decision, expected any day, could have far-reaching implications because millions would lose their insurance if the court rules against the administration.

Yet the Obama administration has faced criticism for declining the spell out what its contingency plan is if the court rules that way, instead voicing confidence that the Supreme Court will keep the program as is.

Obama again voiced that confidence on Monday, and urged the court not to rule otherwise.

He said it’s safe to “assume” the court will do what most legal scholars expect and “play it straight.” Obama said it has been well-documented that Congress never intended to exclude people who went through the federal exchange.

To rule the other way, the president said, would be a “contorted reading of the statute” and a “twisted interpretation.”

But if that does happen, Obama said, “that throws off how that exchange operates” and millions of people would lose subsidies.

“It’s a bad idea,” Obama said.

The president went on to mount a robust defense of the law itself, saying “none” of the alleged “horrors” associated with ObamaCare have “come to pass.”

FoxNews.com/The Associated Press contributed to this report.

DHS Releases 3,700 illegal immigrant ‘Threat Level 1’ criminals

June 5, 2015 By Editor Leave a Comment

Most of the illegal immigrant criminals Homeland Security officials released from custody last year were discretionary, meaning the department could have kept them in detention but chose instead to let them onto the streets as their deportation cases moved through the system, according to new numbers from Congress.

Some of those released were the worst of the worst — more than 3,700 “Threat Level 1” criminals, who are deemed the top priority for deportation, were still released out into the community even as they waited for their immigration cases to be heard.

Homeland Security officials have implied their hands are tied by court rulings in many cases, but the numbers, obtained by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, showed 57 percent of the criminals released were by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s own choice, and they could have been kept instead.

“Put aside the spin, and the fact is that over 17,000 of the criminal aliens released last year were released due to ICE discretion, representing 57 percent of the releases,” said Mr. Goodlatte. “The Obama administration’s lax enforcement policies are reckless and needlessly endanger our communities.”

In a statement to The Washington Times, ICE said it takes release decisions seriously and makes a judgment in each case. That holds true even for Threat Level 1 criminals.

“Not all Level 1 criminal aliens are subject to mandatory detention and thus may be eligible for bond,” the agency said, pointing to mitigating circumstances that can convince agents to release the most serious criminals.

“ICE personnel making custody determinations also take into consideration humanitarian factors such as deteriorated health, advanced age, and caretaking responsibilities. All custody determinations are made on a case-by-case basis taking into consideration the totality of circumstances in each case,” the agency said.

ICE officials insist that those who are released are still monitored, often by electronic ankle bracelets but also through a system of phone checks or by paying a bond.

However, nearly all of those released under electronic monitoring broke the terms of their release, according to ICE numbers.

In fiscal year 2014, ICE put about 41,000 immigrants through electronic monitoring, and more than 30,000 of them broke the terms of their release — many of them racking up multiple violations. All told, they notched nearly 300,000 violations in one year alone, or an average of 10 instances per violator.

The rate has gone down slightly so far in fiscal year 2015. Of the 34,002 immigrants put into electronic monitoring, 27,317 have broken the rules a combined 162,322 times.

ICE said violations can include what they deem minor problems, such as someone lacking a strong enough cell signal for voice verification by phone or someone calling in too early or a few minutes late. Low batteries or jostling an electronic bracelet during sports can also cause a monitoring alarm to go off incorrectly, ICE said.

Of the more than 30,000 detainees who broke the conditional terms of their release and monitoring in 2014, only 2,420 were deemed to have been serious enough breaches to rearrest them.

Part of ICE’s problem is that it doesn’t have enough beds to go out and pick up violators, according to an inspector general’s report released earlier this year.

Agency officials said they would like to be able to hold those who willfully break the rules, but they haven’t requested more beds. Indeed, Mr. Obama’s 2016 budget request actually asked for fewer beds to hold detainees next year, arguing that he wants to put more emphasis on the very alternatives that are being violated.

ICE’s treatment of those awaiting their deportation proceedings has been controversial for several years.

In 2013, the agency released 36,007 convicted criminals who were awaiting the outcome of their deportation cases. Those released had amassed 116 homicide convictions, 15,635 drunken driving convictions and 9,187 convictions stemming from what ICE labeled involvement with “dangerous drugs.”

The total dropped to about 30,000 in 2014 — but the seriousness of the offenses increased, with 193 homicide convictions among the detainees and 16,070 drunken driving convictions. There were also 426 sexual assaults and 303 kidnapping convictions, ICE said.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and ICE Director Sarah Saldana said the numbers were unacceptable and imposed new rules requiring releases to be vetted by senior agency officials to make sure they were correct.

Both Mr. Johnson and Ms. Saldana also said many of the releases are required and give them little discretion — particularly those made under a 2001 Supreme Court decision known as the Zadvydas case, when the justices ruled that immigrants couldn’t generally be detained indefinitely.

That means that if a home country won’t take someone back, ICE must release them after about six months.

But the new numbers obtained by Mr. Goodlatte suggest Zadvydas-related releases were fewer than 2,500 in 2014, or only about 8 percent of the total — compared to the 57 percent that ICE admits were completely discretionary.

The rest of the releases were divided between cases where an immigration judge ordered bond or where ICE was unable to obtain travel documents but it wasn’t considered a mandatory release under the Zadvydas ruling.

By Stephen Dinan – The Washington Times

4 Million Federal Employees Hacked–Major Cybersecurity Breach

June 4, 2015 By Editor Leave a Comment

The Office of Personnel Management was hit by a massive data breach that could have compromised the personal data of at least 4 million current and former federal employees, the Obama administration confirmed Thursday.

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) said in a statement that in April it detected a “cyber-intrusion” that compromised its systems, and that it was sending notifications to approximately 4 million individuals whose personally identifiable information (PII) may have been accessed.

However, the agency that acts as the human resources department for the federal government and conducts more than 90 percent of federal background checks acknowledged that more individuals could have been affected.

“Since the investigation is on-going, additional PII exposures may come to light; in that case, OPM will conduct additional notifications as necessary,” the agency said in a statement.

The Associated Press, which first reported the breach, cited officials saying that the Interior Department had been hacked, while another official said that the breach could potentially affect every federal agency.

The Washington Post reported that the hack was believed to have originated in China, which would make the incident the second major breach from the Chinese in less than a year.

“Protecting our Federal employee data from malicious cyber incidents is of the highest priority at OPM,” OPM Director Katherine Archuleta said in a statement. “We take very seriously our responsibility to secure the information stored in our systems, and in coordination with our agency partners, our experienced team is constantly identifying opportunities to further protect the data with which we are entrusted.”

The agency advised those affected to monitor their bank accounts for unusual activity, and to request a credit report along with other safeguards against fraud.

The FBI said in a statement that it was working with interagency partners to investigate the breach.

In November, a former Department of Homeland Security official disclosed another cyberbreach that compromised the private files of more than 25,000 DHS workers and thousands of other federal employees.

FoxNews.com/The Associated Press contributed to this report.

EPA: No Widespread Water Pollution From Fracking

June 4, 2015 By Editor Leave a Comment

A long-awaited Environmental Protection Agency report released Thursday found no signs of “widespread, systemic” drinking-water pollution caused by fracking — a conclusion that offers a victory to the oil and gas industry and a major blow to a wave of grass-roots anti-drilling movements sprouting across the country.

The results of EPA’s years-long fracking study should bolster natural gas producers, who have benefited from Obama administration climate and environmental policies that have shrunk the coal industry’s hold on the electricity industry. The findings also touch on one of the great paradoxes of Barack Obama’s presidency, in which he has championed an ambitious green-energy agenda while loudly hailing the benefits of the fracking-spurred oil and gas boom.

The oil and gas industry was quick to praise the report, while green groups seized on EPA’s acknowledgment that it has found isolated incidents in which water pollution can be blamed on fracking.

“After more than five years and millions of dollars, the evidence gathered by EPA confirms what the agency has already acknowledged and what the oil and gas industry has known,” said Erik Milito, a director at the American Petroleum Institute. “Hydraulic fracturing is being done safely under the strong environmental stewardship of state regulators and industry best practices.”

The green group Earthworks said it was drawing the opposite conclusion. “Today EPA confirmed what communities living with fracking have known for years, fracking pollutes drinking water,” the group’s policy director, Lauren Pagel, said in a statement. “Now the Obama administration, Congress, and state governments must act on that information to protect our drinking water, and stop perpetuating the oil and gas industry’s myth that fracking is safe.”

Fracking, which saw major technical advances in the past decade, uses high-pressure injections of water and chemicals underground to break up rock formations and free trapped oil and gas supplies. The technique has helped turn the U.S. into an energy superpower, but it’s also set off a wave of attacks from greens and other local activists.

Fueled by the Oscar-nominated 2010 documentary “Gasland,” which told the story of a flaming tap-water and well-water contamination in a Pennsylvania town, communities across the country have enacted fracking bans — including the state of New York as well as Pittsburgh and Denton, Texas. Scientists have also raised concerns about the greenhouse-gas impacts of methane leaks from gas drilling sites, and about a spread of small-scale earthquakes apparently linked to the underground disposal of fracking waste.

But environmentalists have had little success in curbing fracking on a large scale — and have been unable to get either Obama or Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton to embrace their cause. Clinton has hailed natural gas as playing “an important bridge role in the transition to a cleaner energy economy,” despite calling for curbs on methane leaks. Obama has repeatedly praised the gas boom, including during his State of the Union addresses, and has even lumped together “wind, solar and natural gas” as the centerpieces of the nation’s energy strategy.

Natural gas dovetails with Obama’s climate agenda because the fuel generally produces half the greenhouse gas impact of coal. But some green groups dismiss gas as a crutch, saying the U.S. should be moving faster to carbon-free energy sources like solar and wind.

The EPA’s findings do not fully dismiss environmentalists’ concerns that fracking could imperil the water supply, pointing to “potential vulnerabilities in the water lifecycle that could impact drinking water” — along with “specific instances where one or more of these mechanisms led to impacts on drinking water resources, including contamination of drinking water wells.”

Still, the EPA said: “We did not find evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States. … The number of identified cases where drinking water resources were impacted are small relative to the number of hydraulically fractured wells.”

The agency acknowledged that lack of data may lead to the risks being underestimated.

Among the possible areas of risk from fracking, according to EPA’s study, are “water withdrawals in areas with low water availability; hydraulic fracturing conducted directly into formations containing drinking water resources; inadequately cased or cemented wells resulting in below ground migration of gases and liquids; inadequately treated wastewater discharged into drinking water resources; and spills of hydraulic fluids and hydraulic fracturing wastewater, including flowback and produced water.”

The EPA study, first requested by Congress during the fiscal 2010 appropriations cycle, is not designed to evaluate the effectiveness of existing fracking regulations or suggest new rules for the practice. The agency conducted a comprehensive peer review of existing studies on fracking’s drinking-water impacts.

By Elana Schor

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