‘So angry I could spit’! NYT editorial board sinks to new low over Bergdahl mess
Read it and seethe:This duck-and-cover response is the result of the outrageous demonization of Sergeant Bergdahl in the absence of actual facts. Republican operatives have arranged for soldiers in his unit to tell reporters that he was a deserter who cost the lives of several soldiers searching for him. In fact, a review of casualty reports by Charlie Savage and Andrew Lehren of The Times showed there is no clear link between any military deaths and the search. [Note: Michelle Malkin's detailed account of the fallout from Bergdahl's departure would beg to differ.]
And a classified military report shows that Sergeant Bergdahl had walked away from assigned areas at least twice before and had returned, according to a report in The Times on Thursday. It describes him as a free-spirited young man who asked many questions but gave no indication of being a deserter, let alone the turncoat that Mr. Obama’s opponents are now trying to create.
If anything, the report suggests that the army unit’s lack of security and discipline was as much to blame for the disappearance, given the sergeant’s history. [Emphasis ours.]
Freed Taliban vows: I’ll fight Americans again
I’m sure it’s just propaganda and he’s fully intent on living a quiet life of punching schoolgirls in the face or whatever it is that “peaceful” Taliban do.Operation: Close Gitmo is coming along swimmingly, don’t you think?
One of the five Taliban leaders freed from Guantanamo Bay in return for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s release has pledged to return to fight Americans in Afghanistan, according to a fellow militant and a relative.I’m betting the lefty spin on this will be some combo of “Why would you trust anything a Talib says?” and “You’d want to fight America too if you’d been locked up for 13 years.” (Those ideas are mutually exclusive, but oh well.) Is Noori dangerous, though? Wide consensus seems to be that Mohammed Fazl is the most lethal member of the group; he’s the one who led that Taliban rampage north of Kabul 15 years ago that has people looking at him for war crimes. By comparison, says the LA Times, Noori may have been a civilian official, not a military commander at all, and the claim that he’s also wanted for war crimes seems unsupported by experts.
“After arriving in Qatar, Noorullah Noori kept insisting he would go to Afghanistan and fight American forces there,” a Taliban commander told NBC News via telephone from Afghanistan.
Noori pushed to return to Afghanistan after learning that the U.S. had provided written assurances that no country would arrest any of the five freed for a year as long as they lived peacefully, one of his relatives told NBC News by telephone from Afghanistan.
....Oh, by the way: North Korea announced today that it’s taken an American prisoner. Imagine that.
Rice: 30 day notification requirement was too long, so … we ignored it altogether
By Ed Morrissey.... [Rice] doesn’t get any better when trying to explain why the Obama administration never notified Congress. Despite getting two openings to confirm the latest spin that they ignored the law because of the supposed threat to Bergdahl if the deal went public, Rice instead says that the 30-day notification was too long a time frame — so they just ignored it altogether:
We had reason to be concerned about his life, but we also had reason to be concerned that the 30-day period that would normally be honored was too long, that had we waited that long we may have well missed what General Dempsey has called “the last, best opportunity” to bring him back.Wait, what? The administration could have notified Congress of this deal any time before the deal took place, and explained that it developed too fast to make the 30-day cutoff — which, if you parse Rice’s statement closely, she isn’t actually claiming anyway. If that’s the case, then give two weeks’ notice, or one week, or whatever the timeframe is, noting the exigent circumstances. They had enough lead time to make sure the Bergdahls showed up in the Rose Garden for the big speech and photo op on Saturday, but didn’t bother formally notifying the relevant Congressional leadership until that day or later — more than 48 hours later for Dianne Feinstein and Mike Rogers, who chair the intel committees.
So it wasn’t about Bergdahl’s declining health, or Taliban death threats, or a need for instantaneous exchange (which would be an impossibility anyway). Rice’s statement confirms that they didn’t notify Congress because they just didn’t much feel like it.
What Happened to Marine Deserter Wassef Ali Hassoun?
By Michelle Malkin....Ten summers after he abandoned his post, double-deserting Hassoun is still on the run and has yet to be held accountable.
It's worth reminding Americans about Hassoun's story in light of President Obama's exploding Bowe Bergdahl scandal. By all appearances, this administration has no intention of taking action on longstanding allegations that Bergdahl, like Hassoun before him, deliberately abandoned his post in 2009. Defiant Obama said he makes "no apologies" for the treacherous deal, even as reports of Bergdahl's renunciation of U.S. citizenship and conversion to Islam have surfaced in the past 48 hours.
Soldiers on the ground have described how Bergdahl's disappearance catalyzed deadly coordinated attacks by the Taliban on numerous U.S. outposts in Afghanistan. The response has been breathtaking. One of Obama's minions, former Veterans Affairs bureaucrat and now Housing and Urban Development flack Brandon Friedman defended his boss by suggesting that Bergdahl's colleagues were "psychopaths."
Nancy Pelosi's daughter, Alexandra, sneered that Bergdahl's critics inside the military are "dysfunctional." Harry Reid invoked Hillary Clinton's "What difference does it make?" retort. The president himself sniffed that swelling anger among the families of the fallen was "whipped up."
Islamist sympathizers inside our military walk away, and the Obama White House turns a blind eye. The Fort Hood jihad attack by Nidal Hasan, who invoked Hassoun in PowerPoint presentations to his military supervisors, is "workplace violence." Gitmo recidivist Abu Sufian bin Qumu, lead suspect in the Benghazi attack, roams free despite the president's promise to make "justice" his "biggest priority."
Our commander in chief empties Gitmo of the worst of the worst jihadists and shrugs at the recidivists targeting American soldiers and civilians. And in a desperate attempt to deflect from the rising death toll of the Veterans Affairs book-cooking scandal, Obama gave Bob Bergdahl a Rose Garden stage to invoke Allah in Arabic.
If you're not "whipped up" into Category 5 disgust, you're not paying attention.
The awful truth about Obama beginning to dawn on his allies
By Thomas Lifson
It’s
finally happening! Libs are starting to realize that the manufactured
image of Barack Obama as a brilliant, capable executive is hooey, and
that they have bought into an incompetent who threatens to sink them.
Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post
doesn’t quite put it in those terms, of course, but you don’t have to
read between the lines too closely to come up with that interpretation
of his piece entitled, “Americans are starting to doubt President Obama
is a good boss.”
The current scandal engulfing the VA is the latest example of competence questions surrounding this White House, but they include everything from the rollout of HealthCare.gov to the targeting of tea party groups by a Cincinnati IRS office. While none of these problems are easily tied directly to a decision Obama made (or didn't make), they have all eroded the public's faith that he knows what he's doing.Ya think?
"I think there is an increasing appetite and desire for just fundamental competence and accountability," said Republican media consultant Mark McKinnon. "A steady hand on the wheel. Or even a shaky hand on the wheel. Just find the wheel."
The collapse is striking. (snip)
…Obama's numbers on competence are already low enough to trouble many party strategists charged with electing (or reelecting) Democrats to the Senate and the House. In conversations over the past several weeks with these folks, it's become clear that worries over Obamacare specifically have given way to a broader concern that the combination of the pained rollout of HealthCare.gov, coupled with the problems at the VA and other motivators of the Republican base (IRS, Benghazi), could combine into a toxic "This guy (and his party) don't know what they're doing" message this fall.
Column: The Obama post-presidency has already begun
According to Politico, Obama’s Italian dinner party illustrates the paradox of his second term. “Stymied at home and abroad, Obama recognizes that he is less in control of the Washington agenda than ever in his presidency,” write Budoff Brown and Epstein. “Yet his newfound realism has also given him a palpable sense of liberation.” I find nothing paradoxical about Obama’s recent pattern of behavior, nothing mysterious about the golfing, partying, traveling. It is quite obvious: Obama has given up.
He knows that his agenda is now limited to executive orders and bureaucratic regulation, and that even these measures are likely to be in the courts for years. He knows that his foreign policy agenda of engagement with the enemies of America will prove controversial and unpopular. He knows his staff has been ducking-and-covering ever since Lois Lerner announced the IRS had targeted Tea Party groups, and that they have been playing defense through Edward Snowden and Syria and Healthcare.gov and Crimea and the VA and now Bowe Bergdahl. He knows there is a chance that the Republicans will control Congress next January, and he has said, according to Politico, that this “would make his last two years in office unbearable.”
Obama, Politico says, is “giving more thought to his post-presidency than his aides like to suggest.” But there is nothing really for Obama to think about. His ambitions in this office, just like his ambitions at Harvard, in New York, in Chicago, and in the Senate, are now exhausted. America has disappointed him, and it is time to look to the next challenge worthy of Barack Obama. His post-presidency has already begun.
He has decided to relax. He has decided to fill his remaining days getting the most out of his presidential experience. The free travel and lodgings and security escort, the access to good tee times, the ability to get a reservation wherever and whenever he wants, the chance to meet VIPs who will flatter and ingratiate themselves to him—he is enjoying these perks and privileges to the utmost. His motto is not YOLO. It is YOPO: You’re only president once. Why not savor it?
Obama is golfing more than at any point in his term. In March, as Vladimir Putin launched the newest phase of his quest to recreate the Russian Empire, some in the White House had the temerity to suggest that it might not be a good idea to fly to Key Largo for a long weekend of golf and relaxation. Obama disagreed. “Obama sticks to Florida vacation schedule,” read one headline. This was one commitment on which the president would not renege. “I needed this,” he told guests, including his new friend Alonzo Mourning, over dinner at the Ocean Reef Club. “I needed the golf. I needed to laugh. I need to spend time with friends.” I am sure the Ukrainians understand.
.....Jarrett, who serves the same role in this White House that Colonel House served in Woodrow Wilson’s, is the key figure in Obama’s premature post-presidency. She organizes the dinner parties in Washington and abroad, none of which appear on the president’s official schedule. For all the secrecy, the guest lists are entirely predictable. They include the sort of celebrities one sees on the red carpet at Cannes or on panels at Davos: Will Smith and Samuel L. Jackson, Colin Powell and Warren Buffett, Gayle King and Anna Wintour, the CEO of Apple and the head of the World Bank. Like the liberals who attend them, the parties are demographically diverse but intellectually uniform. Of all the boldfaced names mentioned in Budoff Brown and Epstein’s story, the only one that seems remotely capable of independent thought is, of all people, Bono, who is friendly with George W. Bush and got along with the late Jesse Helms.
....“The bull sessions satisfy the president’s intellectual curiosity as he indulges in nuanced conversations about life, ideas, and art,” Politico reports. But how nuanced, really, can these conversations be? Has anyone at these parties ever suggested to Barack Obama that his take on life and ideas and art is incomplete, biased, shallow, or—gulp—wrong? Or that, you know, maybe he should devote some attention to his actual job?
Referring to the administration, one Democrat said to Politico: “I wouldn’t be surprised if they looked at the next three years and think, ‘Oh my God, how are we going to survive the next 36 months of this bullshit?” Good question—one the president seems intent on answering by not caring, by retreating into his comfy and unthreatening cocoon of affluent bourgeois liberals from around the world. The rest of us have to live with the consequences.
By Roger L Simon
....Moral Narcissism is an evocative term for the almost schizophrenic divide between intentions and results now common in our culture. It doesn’t matter how anything turns out as long as your intentions are good. And, just as importantly, the only determinant of those intentions, the only one who defines them, is you.
In other words, if you propose or do something, it only matters that you feel good or righteous about what you did or are proposing, that it makes you feel better personally. The results are irrelevant, as are how the actual activity affects others.
Also, although it pretends (especially to the self) to altruism, moral narcissism is in essence passive aggressive, asserting superiority over the ignorant or “selfish” other. It is elitist, anti-democratic and quote often, consciously or unconsciously, sadistic.
The Obama administration is loaded with moral narcissists, including, obviously, the president himself — Valerie Jarrett, Susan Rice, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton etc. The media and Hollywood are also clearly stuffed to the gills with moral narcissists.
Obamacare is a perfect example of moral narcissism in action. Never mind that the public didn’t want it. Never mind it was an atrociously planned bureaucratic mess (in fact that comes with the territory). It was what Barack Obama wanted — for himself.
Moral Narcissism is an evocative term for the almost schizophrenic divide between intentions and results now common in our culture. It doesn’t matter how anything turns out as long as your intentions are good. And, just as importantly, the only determinant of those intentions, the only one who defines them, is you.
In other words, if you propose or do something, it only matters that you feel good or righteous about what you did or are proposing, that it makes you feel better personally. The results are irrelevant, as are how the actual activity affects others.
Also, although it pretends (especially to the self) to altruism, moral narcissism is in essence passive aggressive, asserting superiority over the ignorant or “selfish” other. It is elitist, anti-democratic and quote often, consciously or unconsciously, sadistic.
The Obama administration is loaded with moral narcissists, including, obviously, the president himself — Valerie Jarrett, Susan Rice, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton etc. The media and Hollywood are also clearly stuffed to the gills with moral narcissists.
Obamacare is a perfect example of moral narcissism in action. Never mind that the public didn’t want it. Never mind it was an atrociously planned bureaucratic mess (in fact that comes with the territory). It was what Barack Obama wanted — for himself.
By Michael Walsh
....All of the Obama team’s transgressions, however, boil down to one simple element: its lack of honor. As I wrote here at PJ recently:
Benghazi matters because it was and is a matter of national honor. And the men and women currently in charge in Washington have no honor.The Bergdahl disgrace follows this pattern. The gum-flappers currently occupying the seats of power in Washington — now we know what government of the Ivy League, by the Ivy League and for the Ivy League looks like — have no experience with the military (other than viewing the enlistees as people too stupid to get into Brown) and no appreciation for the old-fashioned virtues we used to call “American” before the eggheads took over. Obama positively drips with contempt for the country he nominally leads and in which he had so little formative experience. He and the rest of his crew are the simulacrum of Americans without any of the defining characteristics that once birthed a nation. The reason they never anticipated any blowback against the exchange was that they viewed Bergdahl as a victim who — as an added bonus — seemed to feel exactly the same way about the country and its armed forces as they do.
Honorable people do not let American diplomats twist slowly in the wind while they attend “debate prep” and rest up for a shakedown meeting with the One Percent. Honorable people do not suddenly go AWOL while American soil is under attack. Honorable people do not fail to mobilize the formidable resources of the American military, even if it might not be possible for them to get there in time. Honorable people, under questioning by Congress, do not lose their temper and start shouting. Honorable people do not look the bereaved in the eye and lie about who and what killed their loved ones.
Further: honorable people do not go before the public on the Sunday talk shows and knowingly transmit a bald-faced lie. Honorable people do not continue to lie about what took place. Honorable people do not say “We are Americans; we hold our head high,” and then hang their heads in shame as they cut and run at the first sign of trouble. Honorable people do not continue to reward the dishonorable with ever-higher posts. Honorable people resign.
And until honorable people are restored to Washington — not credentialed Ivy League lawyers with high name recognition steeped in cheap Marxism and fashionable anti-American contempt, but genuine patriots who understand that something has gone terribly wrong with America and needs to be redressed — there will be no justice for the victims of Benghazi.
....At least Daedalus could pick up the pieces. What will be left by January, 2017 that we will still recognize as America, and what will we do with it?
Dismal Trade Report for April
By Howard RichmanThe June 4 trade report was dismal in every way. U.S. exports fell, imports rose, and net exports (exports minus imports) reached their lowest level in two years, down from a negative $44.2 billion in March to a negative $47.2 billion in April.
Worsening net exports are a huge drag on the U.S. economy. During the first quarter (January through March 2014), they contributed a negative 0.9% to real GDP, accounting for almost the entire 1.0% fall in real GDP. The April trade statistics are even worse. Apparently, the drag of worsening trade deficits upon U.S. economic growth is continuing.
There are at least four trends contributing to falling U.S. net exports:
1. Slowing world economic growth. Falling U.S. exports usually indicate slowing world economic growth. On November 29, we predicted just such a slowdown. The robust world economic growth predicted by others for 2014 has yet to materialize.
2. Quantitative Easing. The Federal Reserve's strategy of buying long-term U.S. bonds sent private savings abroad which temporarily drove the U.S. dollar down and some other countries' currencies up. Now, that Quantitative Easing is ending, U.S. net exports with these countries are falling. For example, U.S. net merchandise exports to India resumed falling in July as shown in the graph below:
3. Chinese Mercantilism. After letting the Chinese yuan strengthen in 2013, the Chinese government drove down the yuan-dollar exchange rate in 2014 from 16.37 cents at the beginning of January to 16.19 cents at the beginning of June. Doing so made Chinese products less expensive and American products more expensive. U.S. net exports in goods with China were about $3 billion worse in both March and April than they had been one year earlier.
4. Vietnamese Mercantilism. The Vietnamese government has been following the Chinese strategy of maximizing exports while keeping out imports in order to obtain foreign industries. The decline in U.S. net exports to Vietnam has been accelerating as shown in the graph below of U.S. net merchandise exports to Vietnam:
The Obama administration and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will likely continue their efforts to pass the Trans Pacific Partnership, which would probably worsen U.S. net exports with Vietnam and the other included countries. Earlier trade agreements similarly enabled Mexican, Chinese and South Korean mercantilism, because they permitted currency manipulation and did not require balanced trade.
The United States could pass a tariff, scaled to our trade deficit with each trade surplus country. Such a tariff would balance trade and accelerate U.S. economic growth. Unfortunately, given the current establishments in both parties, it is much more likely that Washington will pass agreements that enable mercantilism.
For a few years, Quantitative Easing kept the U.S. trade deficits from worsening. Now that Quantitative Easing is ending, it is likely that growing trade deficits will further drag down U.S. growth, just as they did during the first quarter.
Surprise! The Government Now Can’t Even Guess How Much Obamacare Ultimately Will Ultimately Cost
By Genevieve WoodIt’s no secret Obamacare is unaffordable. But now we also know that even the Congressional Budget Office can’t predict how much more this disastrous law will cost.
According to a footnote from a Congressional Budget Office report released in April but reported this week by Roll Call, the law’s true costs and long-term fiscal impact are simply impossible to track.
That’s a change in tune for the CBO, which originally reported in 2010 that Obamacare would pay for itself and over the course of a decade would decrease the deficit.
So what’s changed?
Well, thanks to the constant modifications to the law, the only thing predictable about Obamacare’s provisions is that they’re unpredictable.
Many of the “savings” and “revenue” (read: mandates and tax increases) originally proposed to pay for this redesign of one-sixth of the U.S. economy, whether Medicare cuts or employer mandates, have been waived, stalled or simply not implemented, making a defensible revised forecast impossible. The changes occurred because it became clear such measures were both politically unpopular and realistically unaffordable.
There are other reasons that it’s virtually impossible to even guess how much Obamacare will ultimately cost.
We learned this week that more than 2 million people—a whopping quarter of those enrolled in Obamacare—who signed up for insurance via Obamacare’s health care exchanges have discrepancies in their records and paperwork.
Apparently the government has inaccurate or inadequate information regarding the income levels of more than 1 million people who signed up and can’t verify the immigration or citizenship status for more than 900,000. That means some current enrollees may not be eligible for Obamacare subsidies and may lose their coverage or may have been given too generous a subsidy and eventually will have to pay the government back.
Serco, Inc., a government contractor hired to track down and verify the missing information, released a statement saying, “Current system access and functionality … limits the ability to resolve outstanding inconsistencies.”
That means the government’s website again was not up to par and much of the work to resolve the data discrepancies will require hands-on work to figure out who among these 2 million people should be getting insurance and subsidies through the exchange and who should not. In other words, there will need to be a significant number of extra staffers brought onto fix this mess.
Guess the Obama administration finally is delivering on those “job creation” promises—too bad it’s at the taxpayers’ expense.
Not all the bad news regarding the spending train wreck that is Obamacare emanates from Washington. Many of the states that chose to set up their own exchanges spent hundreds of millions of federal dollars to do so—and yet ended up with exchanges that don’t work.
As we approach the next enrollment period in November, lawmakers in those states are frantically trying to figure out whether they can get more dollars from Washington to fix their problems or if they are going to have to use their own state funds. State Rep. John Delaney, a Democrat in Maryland, worries his state will have to divert dollars from education, fixing potholes and other programs to address its broken exchange. “You can’t just print money in the states,” he said.
That’s right. But the printing presses in Washington have been overused for some time as well—and states that gladly jumped on the Obamacare bandwagon and took the bait shouldn’t be let off the hook by Congress.
So to sum up, the CBO can’t calculate Obamacare’s future costs, confusion about enrollees’ actual salaries could lead to wildly varying numbers on how much it costs this year, and there’s no telling how much money some states ultimately will weasel out of Washington to set up Obamacare.
Talk about a monstrosity of a government program.
What we do know for sure is that Obamacare will cost far more than President Obama and all those who voted for it in Congress told us it would. Which most of us realized all along.
Special Counsel Investigating 37 Cases of VA Retaliation Against Whistleblowers
By Kerry PicketThe U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) announced on Thursday that it is presently investigating allegations from 37 Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) employee whistleblowers at VA facilities in 19 states of retaliation for disclosing improper scheduling practices and other threats to patient care.
The OSC gives three examples of alleged retaliation toward VA whistleblowers they are looking into and were able to provide “interim relief to these employees” through requested stays to the particular VA’s in question.
“Receiving candid information about harmful practices from employees will be critical to the VA’s efforts to identify problems and find solutions. However, employees will not come forward if they fear retaliation,” remarked Special Counsel Carolyn Lerner in an OSC statement.
Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), co-author of the 1989 Whistlebower Protection Act, said in a press release, “It’s important that the Office of Special Counsel is fulfilling its role here. Whistleblowers are usually at the heart of exposing a major scandal. They ought to be celebrated, not punished, for acting in the public interest.”
“In one case, the OSC requested and obtained a stay of a proposed 30-day suspension without pay for a VA employee who reported the inappropriate and continuous use of patient restraints in violation of VA rules and procedures,” the agency says.
According to the OSC, the employee had never before been punished in over two decades while working for the VA.
In another case at a different VA facility, an employee received a proposed seven-day suspension after conveying concerns to the Inspector General regarding inadequate scheduling and coding procedures at the facility.
Additionally, the employee claims that the VA downgraded the employee’s performance evaluation and reassigned the individual for revealing the concerns to the VA Inspector General.
In a third case at another VA facility, the OSC attained a stay of a demotion for a VA employee in December 2013. According to the OSC, “The VA employee was temporarily reassigned out of a position and then faced demotion after disclosing the mishandling of patient care funds. OSC’s investigation is ongoing.”
The OSC says the agency is separately looking at 49 disclosures tied into the scheduling improprieties and other potential threats to patient safety at VA facilities for a total of more than 80 pending VA claims.
Now There Are Three: Oklahoma, South Carolina Join Indiana in Exiting Common Core
By Kelsey HarknessCommon Core is on the chopping block. Oklahoma today became the third state to exit the national education standards and reclaim its decision-making authority in education. The move comes on the heels of South Carolina, which days ago put an end to Common Core—setting precedent for other states to follow.
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley quietly signed a bill withdrawing the state from Common Core, but Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, also a Republican, was not shy about stating her reasons for pulling her state from the national standards.
“We are capable of developing our own Oklahoma academic standards that will be better than Common Core,” Fallin said in a statement released by her office. “Unfortunately, federal overreach has tainted Common Core. President Obama and Washington bureaucrats have usurped Common Core in an attempt to influence state education standards.
“The results are predictable,” Fallin added. “What should have been a bipartisan policy is now widely regarded as the president’s plan to establish federal control of curricula, testing and teaching strategies.”
Oklahoma will return to the Priority Academic Student Skills standards, which were in place before Common Core practices were implemented. New standards will be developed by the state’s Board of Education, Regents for Higher Education, Board of Career and Technology Education and Commerce Department.
Heritage Foundation education analyst Brittany Corona praised Fallin’s decision, telling The Daily Signal: “Governor Fallin has also embraced the opportunity to make Oklahoma a leader in establishing strong state standards that reflect the needs of industry and academia in Oklahoma by rejecting Common Core.”
South Carolina and Oklahoma follow Indiana, which Gov. Mike Pence pulled from Common Core in March.
“As the third state to exit Common Core, Oklahoma has now sent a clear signal that states are eager to reclaim control over the content taught in local schools,” Corona said.
But Michael Petrilli, a spokesman for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a major advocate of Common Core, didn’t see it that way.
“It’s deeply disappointing that politics have triumphed over what’s best for kids in Oklahoma and South Carolina,” Petrilli told The Daily Signal. “Their education systems will now be thrust into years of chaos, time that would be better spent on teaching and learning. Then again, Oklahoma’s and South Carolina’s leaders have every right to make this decision, ill-advised as it is.”
In South Carolina, Haley signed legislation Friday requiring a committee to review and implement a new set of academic standards by the 2015-16 school year. The bill also mandates that schools revert back to the state’s former assessment tests by 2014-15. Until then, Common Core will remain in effect.
“Just as Indiana did in March, South Carolina’s actions—exiting the Common Core and reclaiming control of their educational decision-making authority—have paved a path for other states struggling with the one-size-fits-all national standards to follow,” Corona said.
A total of 17 states have pushed back against Common Core–including Alaska, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia, which declined to sign on rom the beginning. In Missouri, a bill to exit Common Core currently sits on the governor’s desk for approval.
Seven of Homeschooling Family’s Kids Did Something Unbelievably Impressive by the Time They Turned 12
By Billie HallowellAmid ongoing debate over Common Core and the effectiveness of the public education system, a Christian couple recently published a new book outlining their blueprint for successfully sending seven of their 10 children to college by the age of 12.
In “The Brainy Bunch Book,” parents Mona Lisa and Kip Harding of Montgomery, Alabama, explain how their seven children were home-schooled and ended up heading to college while most of their peers were still navigating middle school.
The parents share their wisdom and experience, while answering the natural question: How did you accomplish such an unbelievable feat?
Apparently motivated by their Christian faith and an urge to help their kids succeed, the Hardings turned to homeschooling — and that their children started flourishing.
Just consider their kids’ astounding academic and professional accomplishments. Among the seven who went to college early, there’s a doctor, an architect and an engineer.
Mom Who Refused to Let Nurse Have ‘Private’ Conversation With Her Daughter Believes She Caught Hospital Citing Law That Doesn’t Exist
By Jason HowertonThe Michigan mother who refused to allow a nurse have a “private” conversation with her teen daughter now believes the hospital misled parents by putting up a notice citing a new law that doesn’t seem to exist.
Christy Duffy tells TheBlaze she took her 17-year-old daughter to Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Michigan, after she injured her foot. She was stunned when she saw a notice informing parents that a nurse would need to have a “private” conversation with children between the ages of 12 and 17.
The mother dug in her heels and refused to comply with what she felt was an infringement on her rights as a parent. Duffy says she was later informed by a representative with the hospital’s privacy department that someone “jumped the gun” and said there was no need to opt out because she isn’t actually legally required to allow a nurse to speak privately with her daughter.
The sign has been taken down, according to Duffy. It is unclear how long the sign was up or how many parents complied with the notice.
....TheBlaze also spoke with a government official who is very familiar with legislation drafted and passed in the state of Michigan. The official, who asked to remain anonymous due to her position, was not aware of any legislation that requires nurses to hold “private” conversations with minors.
We also reviewed other minor-related privacy laws in Michigan and found no mention of a a required private conversation.
On the issue of birth control, there is apparently no specific state law in Michigan that determines whether minors can be given access to contraceptives without parental consent.
...Duffy says she wants parents to know they are not required to leave their children alone with any hospital personnel for a private conversation. It’s “scary” to think that some parents may not understand the rights they have as a parent.
In fact, the mother says she didn’t believe parents’ rights were really eroding in America — until she came close to having hers infringed upon.
Cyber, space warfare efforts continue
It was the first time since 2007 that the Pentagon acknowledged the development of the road-mobile DF-41, which U.S. officials said was test launched twice since 2012, most recently in December.
....On cyber warfare, the report said China, along with Russia, is seeking to promote intergovernmental control over the Internet. China has been a major promoter of seeking to remove control of the Internet from the United States.
Once focused mainly on developing weapons and tactics for a conflict over Taiwan, the Pentagon now regards China’s military buildup as expanding beyond a Taiwan contingency.
“China is investing in military programs and weapons designed to improve extended-range power projection and operations in emerging domains such as cyberspace, space, and electronic warfare,” the report said.
The Chinese military is developing high-technology forces as part of what Beijing calls “informationization” capabilities.
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