Reid: Boehner Killed Immigration Reform To 'Appease The Tea Party'

SAHIL KAPUR – JUNE 30, 2014, 3:29 PM EDT

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on Monday tore into Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) for refusing to act on immigration reform, conceding that there is now "no prospect for reform in the Republican-led House."

He backed President Barack Obama's decision to act administratively where he can.

"Speaker Boehner has made it absolutely clear that he won't lift a finger to fix our broken immigration system so President Obama is right to protect families from being torn apart," Reid said in a statement.

Reid continued:

"Speaker Boehner is out of excuses and his failure of leadership is enormous. Our broken immigration system is one of the biggest challenges we face as a nation and Speaker Boehner knows that addressing it is the right thing to do, yet the Tea Party spooked him into cowering in a corner. Instead of working with Democrats to forge bipartisan solutions, Speaker Boehner has sunk to suing the President and wasting taxpayer money in a transparent attempt to appease the Tea Party.

Brutal Mississippi Primary Prompts College GOP Chair To Switch Parties

NICOLE LAFOND – JUNE 30, 2014, 3:16 PM EDT

The chairman of the Mississippi Federation of College Republicans’ (MFCR) announced on Monday he was resigning and planned to become a Democrat following a brutal U.S. Senate primary.

"The Republican Party has shifted too far to the right in my opinion,” Evan Alvarez wrote in a resignation statement sent out by MFCR, according to The Clarion-Ledger newspaper. “When I ran for Chairman in the spring, I ran to be Chairman of the Mississippi Federation of College REPUBLICANS, not the Mississippi Federation of College 'Tea Partiers,'" Alvarez said.

The resignation came after the MFCR board decided to not impeach the organization’s executive director, Kolby Busby, for publicly endorsing state Sen. Chris McDaniel in the GOP primary against U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran. McDaniel eventually lost the race in a runoff.

Busby came under fire for the endorsement because he affiliated himself with the MFCR in the McDaniel endorsement, which was against the organization’s rules. The MFCR policy is to stay neutral during primaries.

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/evan-alvarez-mississippi-college-gop-resignation

Police: Boy Dies After Shooting Himself In The Head At Boy Scout Camp

CATHERINE THOMPSON – JUNE 30, 2014, 1:57 PM EDT

Authorities said an 11-year-old boy died Monday after he apparently shot himself in the head at a Boy Scout camp near San Diego.

San Diego police Officer Matt Tortorella said the shooting was reported around 7:35 a.m. local time at a camp site on Fiesta Island in Mission Bay, according to the U-T San Diego.

A spokesperson for San Diego Fire Rescue told local TV station KNSD that the boy was pronounced dead at the scene despite rumors that he had been taken to a nearby hospital.

Officials also told KNSD that the firearm had been secured but did not say where the gun was found. No other details about where exactly the shooting took place were immediately available.

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/boy-scout-shooting-san-diego

McCain Brags That Consistently Wrong Jennifer Rubin Thinks He's Right

TOM KLUDT – JUNE 30, 2014, 1:40 PM EDT

Jennifer Rubin, the hawkish blogger for the Washington Post with a long history of being wrong, felt compelled to pay homage over the weekend to people who she said "have been right about a lot of things lately."

It was the inseparable trio of Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) — known, thanks in part to their own self-promotion, as the "three amigos" — who won the honor as Rubin's "Distinguished pols of the week."

Hobby Lobby's Supreme Court Win Sets Up Battle Over Anti-Gay Discrimination

DYLAN SCOTT – JUNE 30, 2014, 1:19 PM EDT

While the company Hobby Lobby triumphed at the U.S. Supreme Court in challenging Obamacare's contraceptive mandate on Monday, the Court does not seem to have flung opened the floodgates for anti-LGBT discrimination as some had feared it might.

Instead, legal observers noted, the ultimate resolution has been left for another day on whether a private business could lawfully discriminate against LGBT people on religious grounds. But Justice Anthony Kennedy offered gay rights advocates a glimmer of hope on that front as well.

The Court ruled 5-4 that the government could not mandate "closely held" private companies with sincerely held religious beliefs, like Hobby Lobby, to cover certain kinds of birth control for their employees. That decision hinged in part on the religious freedom rights of a private corporation. Prior to the ruling, LGBT rights advocates had worried that a broad decision could open the doors for more anti-gay discrimination bills like the Arizona bill that stirred national debate earlier this year.

Based on initial readings of the Hobby Lobby decision, LGBT advocates seemed to have dodged a bullet. The Court's ruling, written by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, is explicitly narrow in effect. But some advocates worry that those pushing anti-LGBT bills will see an opening to introduce new bills and file new lawsuits to legitimize discrimination. Whether they'd win, though, is much less clear.

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/hobby-lobby-decision-gay-rights

(Supreme) Court Rejects Challenge To Law Banning Gay Therapy

Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has rejected a challenge to California's law that bars mental counseling aimed at turning gay minors straight.

The justices on Monday let stand an appeals court ruling that said the state's ban on so-called conversiontherapy for minors doesn't violate the free speech rights of licensed counselors and patients seeking treatment.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that California lawmakers properly showed that efforts to change sexual orientation were outside the scientific mainstream and have been rejected for good reason.

Liberty Counsel, a Christian legal aid group, had challenged the law along with other supporters of the therapy. They argue that lawmakers have no scientific proof the therapy does harm.

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Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/scotus-rejects-challenge-to-law-banning-gay-therapy

D'Souza: African-Americans Better Off Because Ancestors Were 'Hauled From Africa To America'

ERIC LACH – JUNE 30, 2014, 10:06 AM EDT

The reviews are in. Or the review, anyway. And Dinesh D'Souza's new film, "America: Imagine a World Without Her," has been proclaimed "the perfect film to take the family to on a Fourth of July," according to National Review.

In a review published Sunday, National Review's John Fund said the movie, along with the accompanying book, delivers "a more polished and more powerful message" than D'Souza's 2012 film 2016: Obama's America. Fund gives D'Souza much credit for "wielding his sword at so many PC dragons in one sitting."

“Did America owe something to the slaves whose labor had been stolen?” D'Souza writes in the book, according to Fund. The answer is yes, but “that debt ... is best discharged through memory, because the slaves are dead and their descendants are better off as a consequence of their ancestors being hauled from Africa to America.”

When it comes to Native Americans, D'Souza writes that "Indians have gotten a bad deal.”

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/dinesh-dsouza-african-americans

KKK at Gettysburg: Those opposing white revolution will be ‘going in the ground’

By Scott Kaufman
Monday, June 30, 2014 9:37 EDT

Members of the Maryland-based Traditional Rebel Knights of the Ku Klux Klan held a rally at Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania on Saturday.

From a stage in a fenced-off area of the park, speakers delivered diatribes against the conventional foes of the white nationalist organization — minorities, homosexuals, and President Barack Obama.

“The only solution is an all-white revolution,” The Patriot News reported one Klansman as having preached.

“We are taking back this land,” and shouted. “Anyone stands in our way, they’re going in the ground.”

The group’s vice president, Albert Fike, told The Evening Sun that “we’re not coming here to cause hardship or bother people visiting. Basically, we are out there to show other proud white people that we are here if they’re interested in joining.”

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/30/kkk-at-gettysburg-those-opposing-white-revolution-will-be-going-in-the-ground/

Fox News decides there’s a ‘feminist war’ on men’s rights after protest in Detroit

By David Edwards
Monday, June 30, 2014 8:56 EDT

Fox News reported on Monday that feminists could be waging a “war on men” after attendees of a men’s rights conference in Detroit were accused of hate speech.

At what was advertised as the first International Men’s Rights Conference in Detroit last week, A Voice For Men founder Paul Elam called for feminism to be defeated.

And National Post columnist Barbara Kay told the men that the “vast majority of female students allegedly raped on campus are actually voicing buyer’s remorse from alcohol-fueled promiscuous behavior involving murky lines of consent on both sides.”

After a group of feminists showed up to protest the event, Fox News host Steve Doocy asked on Monday, “Who are the one’s being intolerant?”

“Does the intolerance show there’s really a feminist war on men?” co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck suggested.

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/30/fox-news-decides-theres-a-feminist-war-on-mens-rights-after-protest-in-detroit/

Anti-LGBT twins compare reality TV show cancellation to martyrdom, D-Day, ‘Braveheart’

By Travis Gettys
Monday, June 30, 2014 9:09 EDT

A pair of anti-LGBT twins compared losing their proposed reality TV show to religious martyrdom, the D-Day invasion, and the movie “Braveheart” earlier this month at a religious right gathering.

“We just remember June the 6th, 1944,” said Jason Benham at the Road to Majority conference. “We know what happened at D-Day. We know what happened on Omaha and Utah beach. There’s something about those men that our dad taught us when we were kids, and he said, ‘Boys, don’t you ever run from bullets. You run toward the bullets.’”

HGTV called off its plans last month for a reality series “Flip It Forward” starring the brothers, who have compared same-sex marriage to Nazi Germany and taken part in rallies against LGBT and reproductive rights, after the pair’s views were publicized.

“There are cultural bullets flying, all over today, especially religious liberty, and what’s happening right now is many spiritual leaders, elected leaders, they are running from bullets,” Jason Benham said. “But there’s a remnant of people that are ready to stand and say ‘I’m not running from these bullets any more. I’m going to take this beach.’”

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/30/anti-lgbt-twins-compare-reality-tv-show-cancellation-to-martyrdom-d-day-braveheart/