Enter Discussion Forums

Tx4obama

House Republicans Destroy the GOP by Voting to Raise Student Loan Interest Rates

(Politicus USA) By a vote of 221-198, House Republicans continued to destroy their party by passing a bill that would raise student loan rates. Nine Republicans voted against the bill, and two Democrats voted for it. House Republicans tried to disguise their plan to raise student loan interest rates as saving the student loan program by making it a part of the “free market.” What House Republicans passed is a variable rate scheme where a student’s loan rate would be reset every year, so that the loan rate the student paid as a freshman would likely increased each year until they graduated.

Brickbat

Retiring principal: ‘It is harder for us to be nice to kids’

(WaPo) When I look back over my notebooks and journals from the past 21 years there are plenty of things I regret. What I do not regret were the times we educators chose to be kind to a kid. The times when we gave a child a second–and then third and fourth chance. The times we decided to let a kid go on a field trip, ignoring some misdeed that might have excluded him from the trip so that a child who had never been further than the county line could see the world writ large. You know the drill.

Galraedia

CONFIRMED: Fox News Hack James Rosen Is A Political Operative, Not A Journalist

(Mediaite) Ever since a Monday Washington Post article revealed that the Department of Justice investigation into a national security leak included searches of Fox News reporter James Rosen‘s email and phone records, the media has been focused on fluffing up comparisons of that case with the unfolding Associated Press leak investigation. Lost amid the hype and hysteria over the searches was the actual content of the emails between Rosen and his alleged source, then-State Department contractor Stephen Jin-Woo Kim. In those emails, now confirmed to be from Rosen, the Fox News Reporter reveals his noble intentions for seeking secret information from Kim.

ucrdem

Obama calls on Congress to repeal the Bush-Cheney AUMF (military authorization)

(TPM) From today's Counterterrorism speech:

"And that is why I intend to engage Congress about the existing Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF, to determine how we can continue to fight terrorists without keeping America on a perpetual war-time footing.

"The AUMF is now nearly twelve years old. The Afghan War is coming to an end. Core al Qaeda is a shell of its former self. Groups like AQAP must be dealt with, but in the years to come, not every collection of thugs that labels themselves al Qaeda will pose a credible threat to the United States. Unless we discipline our thinking and our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don’t need to fight, or continue to grant Presidents unbound powers more suited for traditional armed conflicts between nation states.

"So I look forward to engaging Congress and the American people in efforts to refine, and ultimately repeal, the AUMF’s mandate. And I will not sign laws designed to expand this mandate further. Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue. But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands."

cynatnite

Eight Men (NO WOMEN) Consider House Bill To Restrict Women's Reproductive Rights

(HuffPo) An all-male panel of House lawmakers considered a bill on Thursday that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy across the United States, without exceptions for rape, incest or health of the mother. The House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, led by the bill's sponsor, Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), has no female members.

n2doc

Thursday Toon roundup - More OK

ashling

Fox's Tesla Re-Coil

The Straight Story

Anti-abortion leader faces criticism after comparing rape to car accidents

(Rawstory) Right to Life president Barbara Listing said Wednesday that women should purchase additional health insurance if they feared being raped, because the sexual crime was like a car accident.

“Nobody plans to have an accident in a car accident, nobody plans to have their homes flooded. You have to buy extra insurance for those,” she told reporters.

applegrove

The 1 Chart That Reveals Just How Grossly Unfair The U.S. Tax System Has Become

Up2Late

Conservative Nonprofits That Received Tax Exempt Status Outspent Liberals by 34-to-1

(Politicus USA) The real scandal about the IRS is that they’ve been overwhelmed with dark money groups claiming nonprofit status since the passing of Citizens United, and conservative groups have outspent liberal groups on political spending by 34-1, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis of the IRS and FEC records.

Open Secrets reported, “Conservative nonprofits that received tax-exempt status since the beginning of 2010 and also filed election spending reports with the Federal Election Commission overwhelmed liberal groups in terms of money spent on politics, an analysis of Internal Revenue Service and FEC records shows.”

Furthermore, their analysis showed, “Of the 21 organizations that received rulings from the IRS after January 1, 2010, and filed FEC reports in 2010 or 2012, 13 were conservative. They outspent the liberal groups in that category by a factor of nearly 34-to-1....”