Hillary Clinton has not yet declared that she is running for president in 2016, but already the Republican jokers have began their attacks.
This attack though, takes the cake. Somehow, Republican presidential wannabe candidate Senator Rand Paul is suggesting that the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal should give Americans pause when it comes to evaluating the Clinton legacy — and, by extension, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s potential presidential campaign.
Paul’s wife, Kelley, made similar remarks in a Vogue profile last year, and her husband agreed with her Sunday in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Rand Paul said the scandal is about more than just infidelity and lying to the American people, but also as “predatory behavior” from the former president.
“One of the workplace laws and rules that I think are good is that bosses shouldn’t prey on young interns in their office,” Paul said. “And I think really the media seems to have given President Clinton a pass on this. He took advantage of a girl that was 20 years old and an intern in his office. There is no excuse for that, and it is predatory behavior.”
Paul said the episode undercuts Democrats’ allegations of a GOP “war on women” and should color people’s perceptions of the Clintons. He added that “sometimes it’s hard to separate” Bill and Hillary Clinton.
“And then they have the gall to stand up and say Republicans are having a war on women?” Paul said rhetorically. “So yes, I think it’s a factor. It’s not Hillary’s fault, but it is a factor in judging Bill Clinton and history.”
The midterm elections are fast approaching… okay, so it’s still January. But the midterms are coming this year, and with that knowledge, Republicans are quickly realizing… again, that their outreach to voting groups should go beyond rich white men.
Mike Huckabee began that outreach last week trying to convince women that Republicans are their friends. And today, Rand Paul picked up where Huckabee left off. Of course, Huckabee’s conclusion that Republicans don’t have a war on woman and Paul’s misguided understanding that women are doing just fine thank you, are both wrong. But they will keep saying it because they don’t have a clue, and the midterm election is almost here.
“The whole thing of the ‘war on women,’ I sort of laughingly say, ‘Yeah, there might have been – but the women are winning it,'” the Republican senator from Kentucky said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” He said women have made great strides and, as an example, now make up more than half the students at medical and law schools.
“I think women are doing very well, and I’m proud of how far we’ve come,” the potential 2016 presidential candidate continued.
“And I think some of the victimology and all of this other stuff is trumped up. We don’t get to any good policy by playing some sort of charade that somehow one party doesn’t care about women or one party is not in favor of women advancing, or other people advancing.”
As the GOP gears up for the 2014 midterms, some in the party have acknowledged that Republican candidates could do better when it comes to talking about women’s issues.
“Some of our members just aren’t as sensitive as they ought to be.” House Speaker John Boehner said last month, when asked about efforts by the House GOP campaign arm to improve how candidates appeal to female voters.
CNN’s chief political correspondent, Candy Crowley, pressed Paul on whether the issue is a “matter of words and tone.”
“Somewhat,” Paul said. “I think also a lot of the debates we have in Washington and in the public, generally, are dumbed down. They’re characterized and we get to the point where we’re talking about stuff and throwing stuff back and forth, and we are never getting to the truth.”
An internal White House assessment concludes that President Obama must distance himself from a recalcitrant Congress after being badly damaged last year by legislative failures, a government shutdown and his own missteps.
Obama has said that his fraught relationship with Congress, especially after Republicans won the House in 2010, complicated his ability to promote his agenda. But for the first time, following what many allies view as a lost year, the White House is reorganizing itself to support a more executive-focused presidency and inviting the rest of the government to help.
The new approach comes after weeks of internal White House debate over a single question: What went wrong in 2013? The answers will help determine the outline of the State of the Union address Obama will deliver Tuesday evening, as well as how he pursues a meaningful legacy in the remainder of his term.
Last year began with the fresh-start ambitions of his second inauguration but ended in a long trail of mistakes, international embarrassments and missed legislative opportunities that sapped Obama’s credibility with the public.
Senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer outlined the lessons learned in a three-page memo that Obama discussed with his Cabinet in recent weeks, according to several administration officials who have read the document.
Among its conclusions is that Obama, a former state legislator and U.S. senator, too often governed more like a prime minister than a president. In a parliamentary system, a prime minister is elected by lawmakers and thus beholden to them in ways a president is not.
As a result, Washington veterans have been brought into the West Wing to emphasize an executive style of governing that aims to sidestep Congress more often. A central ambition of Obama’s presidency — to change the way Washington works — has effectively been discarded as a distraction in a time of hardening partisanship.
In 1986, when Muhammad Ali Jr. was 14 years old, his father, the greatest boxer alive, picked up the teen for a visit.
“We got in the car, and I said I needed to stop for something to eat,” Ali Jr. recalls. “By the time I came back out, he was gone.”
Ali Jr. called his father’s new wife, Lonnie, and said, “Daddy left me up here. I don’t know why he left me.” She said she’d tell him as soon as he arrived home.
“He turned the car around and came back to pick me up,” Ali Jr. says. “I said, ‘Daddy, why did you leave me?’ He said, ‘I kind of forgot you were in the car.’ ”
Ali Jr. remembers it sadly, the moment when his dad’s Parkinson’s became apparent.
“That was the first time I actually realized something was wrong with him,” he said.
Now 41, nearly destitute and living in the dangerous Chicago neighborhood of West Englewood, Ali Jr. fears his father has now forgotten him for good — and the boxing great’s wife, Lonnie, is keeping him from even saying a proper goodbye.
“If I saw my father right now, I’d say I love you, I miss you, and I want you to see your grandkids,” says Muhammad Jr., who lives in a two-bedroom hovel he shares with his wife, Shaakira, and two children, Ameera, 6, and Shakera, 5.
“I wished before my dad got really sick, I could have had that father-son relationship, but that’s impossible now. I wish I could have made up for lost time. But it doesn’t break my heart anymore. It’s been broken so many times I’m used to it by now.”
Muhammad Jr. was born in 1972 in Philadelphia to Ali, then 30, and actress Belinda Boyd, who was 17. Muhammad Jr. can’t remember ever enjoying a family meal together. Mostly, his grandparents raised him, as his father was busy boxing and his mom was acting in films.
He grew up with three sisters — Maryum and twins Jamillah and Rasheda — but when they were infants, Ali began an affair with Veronica Porsche, who became his second wife in 1977.
The kids still saw their dad, and Junior fondly remembers those days as an extended family.
“My father used to do magic tricks. He’d have a handkerchief that he’d make into a cane; he’d then make it disappear. His card tricks were really good. He was such a comical person. My father liked to wear masks and scare people. He liked to have people on the edge of their seats.
“We used to go to Pennsylvania where he had a training camp, and he’d do tricks on stage. We all went. It was all the family, including my stepsisters Leila and Hana. We’d get on the Bluebird Winnebago bus and go up to see him,” Muhammad Jr. says.
“We stayed in log cabins, ride horses, watch him train, jump ropes and eat all the time as a family. He had a great cook.
“But I never went to any boxing matches apart from one when he fought Leon Spinks, and I just remember he kept on smiling even though he was getting hit a lot.
“He never wanted me to be a fighter. He said, ‘Don’t get into it if you don’t know what you’re doing, as it’s dangerous.’
“I used to see him all the time when I was a child. He made sure he was there, would get all the siblings together, and never kept us a secret from each other. I was proud of my daddy. Fame and fortune meant nothing, I just saw him as my daddy.”
But being Muhammad Ali Jr. had its pitfalls. Although his dad was conquering the world for a third time in 1978, his son was battling on the playground.
“You may think having Muhammad Ali as your dad is great, but I had problems. People wanted to pick fights. School was hell. They wanted to see if I was like my father. I’d get bullied all the time. Girls would only get with me because of my father, not because of me. Nothing was as it seemed. I didn’t know who really loved me. People just used me so they could get a glimpse of my dad. Some people didn’t like it that my dad was black or didn’t go to war. We had to fight all his battles.
“It meant my grandparents sheltered me a lot. Dad didn’t know, as he wasn’t around every day. I felt in some ways like I never had a childhood.
“I’d say my father was good and bad. The reason I say that is because my father never really spent time with me. Whenever we had time, he spent it with his daughters rather than me. Even in the only picture I have of all the family together, they’re all wrapped close, and I’m far out to the left. I felt like the outcast. I still do,” Muhammad Jr. sobs.
A Republican lawmaker in Oklahoma has proposed a controversial way to stopping same-sex marriages in the state. According to News9.com, state Rep. Mike Turner (R) has proposed scrapping marriage in the state altogether.
The lawmaker contends that it is the only way to keep same-sex marriage illegal in the state while still defending the U.S. Constitution.
“[My constituents are] willing to have that discussion about whether marriage needs to be regulated by the state at all,” Turner told Channel 9.
Other lawmakers feel the same way, he said. They envision a state that doesn’t recognize any marriages at all.
“That would definitely be a realistic opportunity, and it’s something that would be part of the discussion,” Turner said.
The Republicans currently have what is called a shell bill in the roster of bills on the state house floor. They can call the bill to the floor for debate or rewrite it at a moment’s notice in order to respond to any rulings regarding the state’s ban on same-sex marriage.
The Arizona Republican Party formally censured Sen. John McCain on Saturday, citing a voting record they say is insufficiently conservative.
The resolution to censure McCain was approved by a voice-vote during a meeting of state committee members in Tempe, state party spokesman Tim Sifert said. It needed signatures from at least 20 percent of state committee members to reach the floor for debate.
Sifert said no further action was expected.
McCain spokesman Brian Rogers declined to comment on the censure. But former three-term Sen. Jon Kyl told The Arizona Republic (http://bit.ly/1mIyKyy ) that the move was “wacky.”
“I’ve gone to dozens of these meetings and every now and then some wacky resolution gets passed,” Kyl told the newspaper on Saturday. “But most people realize it does not represent the majority of the vast numbers of Republicans.”
Kyl also said McCain’s voting record was “very conservative.”
McCain isn’t up for re-election until 2016, when will turn 80. He announced in October that he was considering running for a sixth term.
President Obama used this week’s address to inform the world that the Administration has taken another important step to protect women at college by establishing the White House Task Force on Protecting Students from Sexual Assault. An estimated 1 in 5 women is sexually assaulted at college, and the President said that we will keep taking actions like strengthening the criminal justice system, reaching out to survivors, and changing social norms so that all Americans can feel safe and protected as they pursue their own piece of the American dream.
It was her wish, and that of her family that she be taken off life support if that decision had to be made, but thanks to the “small government” Republican controlled state of Texas, she was kept on life support against the wish of her family.
Chalk this one up for the Republican’s idea of small, non intrusive, government.
A federal judge ordered Friday night that Marlise Muñoz, the Texas woman who has been kept on life support against her and her family’s will, be removed from her ventilator and respirator.
Muñoz has been legally dead since she collapsed on her kitchen floor in November, but the state has kept her on a ventilator because she was pregnant. Lawyers for the John Peter Smith Hospital, where Muñoz is being kept, cited an obscure state law that stipulates that hospitals are required not to remove “life-sustaining treatment” from pregnant women to argue that such life support was necessary.
However, lawyers both for Muñoz’s family and for John Peter Smith Hospital acknowledged Friday that the fetus was “non-viable.” Earlier, attorneys simply had indicated that the fetus suffered “abnormalities,” but did not say whether it could viably live outside of the womb.
Muñoz’s case has sparked a conversation about the bodily autonomy of pregnant women when it comes to end-of-life wishes. Texas is one of 12 states that invalidates a woman’s wishes if she is pregnant.
Pedro Reyes says being Mexican is like living in an apartment where an upstairs neighbor has a leaking swimming pool.
“Just what is leaking,” says Reyes, “is hundreds of thousands of guns.”
He wants people to think about the availability of guns in the United States, and the impact that has in Mexico.
At the University of South Florida in Tampa, he recently held a series of workshops and a performance, using theater to encourage a discussion about guns. It’s called “Legislative Theater,” a style of performance pioneered in Latin America in the 1960s to influence social change.
In Tampa, Reyes called his project “The Amendment to the Amendment.” Specifically, the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees the right to bear arms. Reyes asks his actors and the audience to consider if there are possible changes that might improve the amendment
Reyes believes art should address social issues like gun violence, even when they’re difficult and controversial. “We have to be allowed to ask questions,” he says. “If you are not allowed to ask questions, you are not free.”
Reyes also addresses the issue of gun violence in another way, by using guns themselves. His first project began in 2007 in the Mexican city of Culiacan. As part of a campaign to curb shootings, the city collected 1,527 guns. He used them to create art.
“Those 1,527 guns were melted and made into the same number of shovels,” he says. “So for every gun now, there’s a shovel. And with every shovel, we planted a tree.”
Now Reyes is working on a new project. It is one that transforms guns into something more musical.
An exhibition of the work is on display at the University of South Florida’s Contemporary Art Museum. It’s called “Disarm,” and consists of guns that have been turned into musical instruments.
Jesse Ryan Loskarn, a former chief of staff to Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), was found dead Thursday in Carroll County, Md., following charges that he possessed and distributed child pornography. The Maryland medical examiner’s office confirmed Friday afternoon that the cause of death was suicide.
“At approximately 12pm yesterday, Carroll County Sheriff’s Deputies responded to a private residence … for a report of an unconscious male, believed to be deceased,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement on Friday. “Family members reported finding 35-year old Jesse Ryan Loskarn unresponsive in his basement where he’d been residing with family since this past December.”
Bruce Goldfarb, a spokesman for the Maryland medical examiner’s office, told the Los Angeles Times that Loskarn had died by hanging himself.
Loskarn had been arrested in December by U.S. Postal Service investigators on charges that he possessed and distributed child pornography after a raid on his home.
As a grand jury began its proceedings, Loskarn was released from custody and was residing at his parents’ home in Maryland. He was ordered not to use the Internet and to wear an ankle bracelet to track his movements.
The complaint filed against him alleged that he possessed a hard drive filled with “hundreds of videos depicting underage boys engaged in sexually explicit conduct.”
Loskarn had served as Alexander’s chief of staff for two years. The senator said in a December news release that he was “stunned, surprised and disappointed” by the allegations. On Friday, Alexander said, “For everyone involved, this is a sad and tragic story from beginning to end.”
Loskarn’s parents, Chuck and Gay Loskarn, also released a statement Friday.
“We loved our son very much, and we’re devastated by his death,” they said. “Please respect our privacy at this difficult time and let us grieve in peace. Pray for him, his family and friends.”
Prior to joining Alexander’s office, Loskarn had served as communications director for Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) from 2003 to 2007. In a statement to HuffPost, Blackburn said, “We received the news with sadness and are keeping his family in our thoughts and prayers.”
This story has been updated with comments from the medical examiner’s office, Loskarn’s parents, and Rep. Marsha Blackburn.
What is the bigger risk inside a state capitol building: openly carrying an American flag or an assault rifle?
In Virginia, visitors to the state legislature cannot bring American flags and signs affixed to sticks, because capitol security considers sticks a public threat. Firearms, however, are allowed.
A group of gun violence prevention activists discovered this when they arrived on Monday to attend a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day event. According to Virginia Capitol Police, the groups were informed beforehand of the restriction barring sticks at permitted rallies, because they can be used as weapons.
Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America’s Gena Reeder said they were aware of the rules, but “certainly not in our wildest imagination thought that could apply to the American flag.”
While the moms tore out the dowels of their flags, capitol grounds visitors with firearms were ushered through the entrance. That day, Virginia Citizens Defense League and other gun rights groups organized a “Guns Save Lives” day. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that about half of the crowd was armed, packing weapons that ranged from handguns to assault rifles.
The anti-gun violence activists couldn’t reconcile this conflicting message in their heads, Reeder explained. “We are sending a message that you cannot hand carry an American flag into a state capitol, but you can bring a loaded weapon,” Reeder told ThinkProgress. “Are guns becoming more patriotic than an American flag?
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