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Donald Trump Really Doesn’t Understand How Federal Funding for Planned Parenthood Works

by MelodeeGresswell Posted on February 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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During Thursday’s CNN-Telemundo GOP debate, frontrunner Donald Trump strayed from his colleagues on the campaign trail by saying some nice things about Planned Parenthood.

“Millions and millions of women, cervical cancer, breast cancer, are helped by Planned Parenthood,” he said. “So you can say whatever you want but they have millions of women going through Planned Parenthood that are helped greatly.”

He’s made similar points before. “They do some very good work,” Trump said of Planned Parenthood on Sunday’s Meet the Press. “Cervical cancer, lots of women’s issue, women’s health issues are taken care of.”

But throughout the campaign, Trump has said—and he reiterated this point at Thursday’s debate—that as long as Planned Parenthood continues to provide abortions, he would defund the women’s health provider as a show of his pro-life bonafides.

“I would defund it because of the abortion factor, which they say is 3 percent. I don’t know what percentage it is,” he said at Thursday’s debate in Texas. “But I would defund it, because I’m pro-life.”

But here’s the thing about Trump’s pro-life pledge: The federal Hyde Amendment already prohibits the use of federal funding for abortions, except for those performed in cases of rape, incest, and where the life of the mother is at risk. This amendment has been attached to federal appropriations bills regularly since the 1970s. Planned Parenthood receives virtually no federal funds to provide abortions. It’s that simple.

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Donald Trump Really Doesn’t Understand How Federal Funding for Planned Parenthood Works

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The FBI Says Its Fight With Apple Is Just About One Phone. Police and Prosecutors Say Otherwise

by MurrayMeredith Posted on February 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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The war between Apple and the FBI over the iPhone used by Syed Farook, one of the San Bernardino shooters, hinges mostly on one major question: Is the court order telling Apple to help the FBI unlock Farook’s iPhone an isolated case, or is it just the start of a new method for the government to guarantee access to anyone’s device?

Apple, which is fighting the order to unlock Farook’s phone, says complying with it would be just the tip of the iceberg. “The order would set a legal precedent that would expand the powers of the government, and we simply don’t know where that would lead us,” Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote in a letter to customers on Sunday. “Should the government be allowed to order us to create other capabilities for surveillance purposes, such as recording conversations or location tracking?” Privacy groups and most tech experts agree with Cook.

But the FBI insists no such thing will happen, saying it is only seeking access to Farook’s phone and no one else’s. “The San Bernardino litigation isn’t about trying to set a precedent or send any kind of message,” FBI Director James Comey wrote in a post responding to Cook on Lawfare, a prominent national security blog, on Sunday. “We simply want the chance, with a search warrant, to try to guess the terrorist’s passcode without the phone essentially self-destructing and without it taking a decade to guess correctly. That’s it. We don’t want to break anyone’s encryption or set a master key loose on the land.”

Yet high-profile supporters of the FBI’s case have said the precedent is what’s important. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a prominent advocate for more law enforcement access to encrypted data, wrote in USA Today last week that “the iPhone precedent in San Bernardino is important for our courts and our ability to protect innocent Americans and enforce the rule of law. While the national security implications of this situation are significant, the outcome of this dispute will also have a drastic effect on criminal cases across the country.”

Comey and other law enforcement officials have repeatedly stressed how widespread they believe their encryption problem is. Both terrorists and criminals increasingly use encryption to communicate, they say, meaning the government’s ability to detect them and stop crimes or attacks is getting dramatically worse. And that problem extends well beyond big terrorism cases like San Bernardino and into everyday police work. “I’d say this problem…is actually overwhelmingly affecting law enforcement,” Comey told Burr’s committee last week, “because it affects cops and prosecutors and sheriffs and detectives trying to make murder cases, car accident cases, kidnapping cases, drug cases. It has an impact on our national security work, but overwhelmingly this is a problem that local law enforcement sees.”

Cyrus Vance Jr., the district attorney for the borough of Manhattan in New York City, often highlights how many cases are supposedly impossible to make because suspects use encryption—and said on Sunday he’d put the Apple precedent to more widespread use, forcing companies to help unlock the phones of suspects in the future. “As the encryption debate zeroes in on the cowardly terrorist acts committed in San Bernardino, we should also remember that Apple’s switch to default device encryption affects virtually all criminal investigations, the overwhelming majority of which are handled by state and local law enforcement,” he said last week in calling for Congress to pass a law mandating backdoors. Burr and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, have pledged to introduce such a bill in Congress.

State and local officials around the country back Vance. The Intercept compiled a collection of quotes from local law enforcement officials that run counter to Comey’s claim that the Apple case will provide only one-time access. As Matt Rokus, the deputy chief of the Eau Claire, Wisconsin, police put it, “The Apple case is going to have significant ramifications on us locally.”

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The FBI Says Its Fight With Apple Is Just About One Phone. Police and Prosecutors Say Otherwise

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Bernie Sanders Attacks Hillary Clinton’s Ties to Big Banks

by EarthaTWHH Posted on January 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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Bernie Sanders attacked Hillary Clinton’s ties to big banks, taking off the gloves on Sunday night in the last Democratic presidential debate before the Iowa caucuses.

Asked to lay out the difference between his and Clinton’s plans for dealing with big banks, Sanders responded with a personal jab.

“The first difference is, I don’t take money from big banks, I don’t get personal speaking fees from Goldman Sachs,” Sanders said, to boos and scattered applause from the audience.

Goldman Sachs paid Clinton $675,000 in speaking fees in 2015, according to public disclosures. Wall Street reform is a key plank in Sanders’ campaign platform.

“Can you really reform Wall Street when they are spending millions and millions of dollars on campaign contributions and when they are providing speaker fees to individuals?” Sanders asked. “So it’s easy to say, well, I’m going to do this and do that, but I have doubts when people receive huge amounts of money from Wall Street.”

Clinton responded by suggesting that Sanders had cast aspersions not only on her ties to financial corporations, but on President Barack Obama as well. “He’s criticized President Obama for taking donations from Wall Street, and President Obama has led our country out of the great recession…I’m going to defend President Obama for taking on Wall Street, taking on the financial industry and getting results,” Clinton said.

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Bernie Sanders Attacks Hillary Clinton’s Ties to Big Banks

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Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton Just Duked it Out Over Health Care at the Democratic Debate

by KRGMurraydeomam Posted on January 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders spent much of the last week battling over the Vermont senator’s proposal to create a nationwide single-payer health care system. In one of the most important exchanges of Sunday night’s debate, they finally hashed it out face to face.

Watch:

What neither of them would say outright—perhaps because it’s not an especially inspiring message for Democrats to hear—is that the question of how best to expand health care access is, at least for the time being, moot. Republicans have a huge majority in the House and will almost certainly continue to control the House in January 2017. But their argument exposed core differences between the two candidates on what the nation’s health care system should look like, and how it should be paid for. And it doesn’t look like a debate either candidate is about to abandon any time soon.

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Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton Just Duked it Out Over Health Care at the Democratic Debate

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"Lawless and Radical": What the 2016 Candidates Think of Obama’s New Climate Change Plan

by YolandaFoust Posted on August 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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President Barack Obama just unveiled the final version of rules that crack down on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants—the most significant contributor to global warming in the United States. “Climate change is not a problem for another generation, not anymore,” Obama said in a video released on Sunday. But not everyone agrees. Here’s what some of the leading 2016 presidential candidates think of Obama’s Clean Power Plan:

Marco Rubio

On Sunday, at an event hosted by the Koch Brothers, the Florida senator slammed the plan. “So if there’s some billionaire somewhere who is a pro-environmental, cap and trade person, yeah, they can probably afford for their electric bill to go up a couple of hundred dollars,” Rubio said, according to The Huffington Post. “But if you’re a single mom in Tampa, Florida, and your electric bill goes up by thirty dollars a month, that is catastrophic.” Experts disagree with Rubio’s suggestion that the new rules will be costly for ratepayers. As Tim McDonnell explains, “even though electric rates will probably go up, monthly electric bills are likely to go down, thanks to efficiency improvements.”

Jeb Bush

The former Florida governor released an official statement, calling the plan “overreaching” and “irresponsible.” Bush argued that the new rules would raise energy prices while also trampling on the powers of state governments. Bush went so far as to say that the plan would “hollow out our economy” for the sake of addressing climate change.

Mike Huckabee

The former Arkansas governor has been adamant about his opposition to the Clean Power Plan, saying that it would “bankrupt families.” On Monday he doubled down on his opposition to the plan, characterizing it as the president’s “carbon crusade”:

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"Lawless and Radical": What the 2016 Candidates Think of Obama’s New Climate Change Plan

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Let John Oliver Explain How Standardized Testing Makes Kids Anxious and Vomit Under Pressure

by LawrencOUS Posted on May 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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Every year, students around the country are subjected to an insane amount of mandatory, standardized testing. So much so, the average number of tests a student completes by the time they graduate high school is a staggering 113, according to the latest “Last Week Tonight.” As host John Oliver noted on Sunday, all the stressful bubble-filling is taking an inevitable toll—with teachers reporting their students throwing up under the pressure so often, official testing guidelines specifically outline how to deal with kids vomiting on their test booklets.

“Something is wrong with our system when we just assume a certain number of students will vomit,” Oliver said. “Standardized tests are supposed to be an assessment of skills, not a rap battle on ‘8 Mile’ Road.”

Watch below as Oliver explains how our education system arrived at this extreme point:

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Let John Oliver Explain How Standardized Testing Makes Kids Anxious and Vomit Under Pressure

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Happy Easter! The Obama Family Is Pretty Adorable.

by RheaPhanprocriye Posted on April 5, 2015

Mother Jones

I’m a secular Jew. I don’t know much about Easter—it has to do with rabbits and Jesus—but as far as I can tell it’s a lovely holiday.

Here is the Obama family’s Easter photo. Isn’t it so adorable? They’re a pretty adorable family.

The dog looks less than thrilled.

Happy Easter! I’m going to Benihana.

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Happy Easter! The Obama Family Is Pretty Adorable.

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Oil trains are blowing up all over the place

by VernellClouse Posted on February 17, 2015

Oil trains are blowing up all over the place

By on 17 Feb 2015commentsShare

Two tanker trains full of crude oil have derailed and burst into flames in the last few days, one in West Virginia and one in Ontario. They’re the most recent examples of a phenomenon that’s increasingly common as fracking for oil becomes a top American pastime.

The West Virginia accident happened on Monday — and the aftermath stretched well into Tuesday. The AP reports:

Fires burned for hours Tuesday after a train carrying 109 tankers of crude oil derailed in a snowstorm alongside a West Virginia creek, sending fireballs into the sky and threatening the nearby water supply.

Hundreds of families were evacuated and two water treatment plants were shut down after dozens of the cars left the tracks and 19 caught fire Monday afternoon, creating shuddering explosions and intense heat.

Part of the formation hit and set fire to a house, and one person was treated for smoke inhalation, but no other injuries were reported, according to a statement from the train company, CSX.

The train was carrying crude from North Dakota’s Bakken shale and was on its way to a terminal in Yorktown, Va., not far from where another train headed to the same terminal derailed last April.

The West Virginia derailment was the second in 48 hours — the first occurred Sunday in a remote area of Canada. The CBC reports:

The Transportation Safety Board and environment officials were investigating Sunday at the scene of a derailment of a Canadian National Railway train near Gogama, in Northern Ontario.

Seven rail cars caught fire when a train carrying crude oil derailed late on Saturday night, CN said on Sunday.

The train, heading to eastern Canada from Alberta, derailed shortly before midnight about 80 kilometres south of Timmins, Ont., a CN spokesman said. Canada’s largest rail operator said 29 of 100 cars were involved and seven had caught fire.

An unknown amount of oil spilled into the snow at the site of the derailment.

Oil shipments by rail have increased by more than 400 percent since 2005, and with the trains have come many minor disasters and a few major ones. The worst yet occurred in 2013, when a derailment in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, killed 47 people.

Since then, U.S. and Canadian officials have started moving toward requiring railroads to switch from 1960s-era tanker cars to sturdier, less accident-prone ones, but a timeline for the shift hasn’t yet been set. Even when it is, the new rules may not be effective enough — Reuters reports that the train that derailed in West Virginia was pulling newer, supposedly tougher railcars.

The West Virginia derailment is also the latest in a series of fossil fuel-related disasters to affect that state’s water supply. The biggest recent example came a year ago when Freedom Industries dumped 10,000 gallons of MCHM — an industrial chemical used in the coal-cleaning process — into the Elk River. A month later, more than 100,000 gallons of coal slurry poured into Fields Creek, a tributary of the Kanawha River that swallowed up an oil-filled railroad car yesterday.

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Oil trains are blowing up all over the place

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John Oliver Hates New Year’s Eve Too. Watch Him Show Us How to Successfully Bail on the Worst Holiday

by WernerBalke Posted on December 29, 2014

Mother Jones

“New Year’s Eve is like the death of a pet. You know it’s going to happen, but somehow you’re never truly prepared for how truly awful it is. New Year’s Eve is the worst. It combines three of the least pleasant things known to mankind: forced interaction with strangers, being drunk, cold and tired, and having to stare at Ryan Seacrest for five solid minutes, waiting for him to tell you what the time is.”

And with that, John Oliver briefly returned to Last Week Tonight on Sunday to arm us with some helpful tips on how to avoid the ever disappointing shit show that is New Year’s Eve. Watch below:

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John Oliver Hates New Year’s Eve Too. Watch Him Show Us How to Successfully Bail on the Worst Holiday

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How the Christian Right Is Using Hobby Lobby and "Duck Dynasty" to Take Back America

by VickiEllis Posted on October 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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Pundits may be declaring the culture wars over, but conservative Christians are donning their battle gear and rushing back to the front lines. In recent months, a coalition of conservative evangelical organizations has been pursuing an aggressive voter mobilization campaign that involves a combination of high-tech tools, briefings for pastors, and rallies simulcast to mega-churches around the country.

The goal of these gatherings is to drum up outrage over recent political skirmishes, including the Hobby Lobby lawsuit, and to persuade believers that their religious freedoms are under attack by ungodly forces. During one recent event, which was shown in churches across the nation, speakers likened the situation of US churchgoers to Christians beheaded by ISIS in Syria. “We see the struggle between good and evil, light and darkness, truth and lies,” said David Benham, whose planned HGTV reality show was canceled after his fiercely anti-gay remarks came to light. “What’s happening with swords over in the Middle East is happening with silence over here in America.”

The campaign dates back to March, when United in Purpose, a nonprofit funded by wealthy evangelical Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, convened a Voter Mobilization Strategy Summit near Dallas. At the event, churches and conservative Christian political organizations forged a strategy to mobilize voters for the 2014 midterms. United in Purpose, a behind-the-scenes technology and communications group with deep dominionist ties, also shared a variety of tools including videos and voter mobilization apps. (One app allows pastors to compare their membership rosters with voter rolls, so they can better guide their flock to the polls.) The Family Research Council and Texas-based Vision America, which played a key role in the summit, then began hosting policy briefings for pastors and staging lavishly produced voter mobilization events that were broadcast live to churches and groups across the country.

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How the Christian Right Is Using Hobby Lobby and "Duck Dynasty" to Take Back America

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