On March 28, 2012 at Convocation, North America's largest weekly gathering of Christian students, Dr. Ben Carson, American neurosurgeon and the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, shared with Liberty University students his life story and how important it is in your life to stand up for what you believe in.
Dr. Carson is a gifted neurosurgeon and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States by President George W. Bush in 2008. He has received over 60 honorary doctorates and is the author of four bestselling books: Gifted Hands, The Big Picture, Take the Risk, and Think Big.
Ben Carson: Big Bang A Fairy Tale, Theory Of Evolution Encouraged By The Devil “I personally believe that this theory that Darwin came up with was something that was encouraged by the adversary, and it has become what is scientifically, politically correct.” Sept. 22, 2015 http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/ben-carson-big-bang-a-fairy-tale-theory-of-evolution-encoura [with video excerpts embedded, and comments]
http://evolutionvcreation.blogspot.co.uk/ Hear four distinguished thinkers -- Benjamin Carson, Francis Collins, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett -- in a thought provocative discussion of "Science and Faith," recorded in Beverly Hills, California in 2006. The discussion is moderated by journalist Kathleen Matthews.
Dr Benjamin Carson is a world famous pedriatic neurosurgeon who has performed revolutionary brain surgeries and is a Seventh-day Adventist christian. In 1987 he became the first surgeon to successfully separated Binder siamese twins joined at the head. At age 32, Benjamin Carson became Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore
Dr Francis Collins has among other achievement developed techniques to map genes that cause diseases such as cystic fibriosis. He is now Director of National Center for Human Genome Research, one of the largest undertakings in the history of science. This center has managed to chart the entire human genome. He is a scientist and a believer, and finds no conflict between those world views. He says, ' As a believer, I see DNA, the information molecule of all living things, as God's language, and the elegance and complexity of our own bodies and the rest of nature as a reflection of God's plan.
Dr Daniel Dennett has confronted the philosophical problem of individual awareness, synthesizing advanced research in neurology, psychology, linguistics, computer science and artificial intelligence. He is a evolutionist
Dr Richard Dawkins is now world famous as a foremost scientist in defense of the theory of evolution. He is a British scientist and author of the book The God Delusion
I address the arguments for creationism presented by retired neurosurgeon and Presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson, made at a conference called "Celebrating Creation". From misrepresenting scientific evidence, to anecdotes about personal "blessings", and arguments from personal incredulity, Carson pulls out lots of typical nonsense from the creationism playbook, and a few new ones, which are easy to debunk with just a little scientific research and reason.
Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science, in all of biology. According to Bill Nye, aka "the science guy," if grownups want to "deny evolution and live in your world that's completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that's fine, but don't make your kids do it because we need them."
-- Transcript:
Denial of evolution is unique to the United States. I mean, we're the world's most advanced technological—I mean, you could say Japan—but generally, the United States is where most of the innovations still happens. People still move to the United States. And that's largely because of the intellectual capital we have, the general understanding of science. When you have a portion of the population that doesn't believe in that, it holds everybody back, really.
Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science, in all of biology. It's like, it's very much analogous to trying to do geology without believing in tectonic plates. You're just not going to get the right answer. Your whole world is just going to be a mystery instead of an exciting place.
As my old professor, Carl Sagan, said, "When you're in love you want to tell the world." So, once in a while I get people that really—or that claim—they don't believe in evolution. And my response generally is "Well, why not? Really, why not?" Your world just becomes fantastically complicated when you don't believe in evolution. I mean, here are these ancient dinosaur bones or fossils, here is radioactivity, here are distant stars that are just like our star but they're at a different point in their lifecycle. The idea of deep time, of this billions of years, explains so much of the world around us. If you try to ignore that, your world view just becomes crazy, just untenable, itself inconsistent.
And I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, in your world that's completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that's fine, but don't make your kids do it because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people that can—we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems.
It's just really hard a thing, it's really a hard thing. You know, in another couple of centuries that world view, I'm sure, will be, it just won't exist. There's no evidence for it.
Directed / Produced by Jonathan Fowler and Elizabeth Rodd
On Sunday, September 28 Dr. Ben Carson visited the Reagan Library for a lecture and book signing on his number one New York Times bestselling book.
Dr. Ben Carson made headlines with his keynote at the National Prayer Breakfast in February 2013. Standing just a few feet from President Obama, the neurosurgeon offered a common sense critique of liberal government, calling for a return to our historic culture of personal responsibility, free markets, and upward mobility. The speech instantly went viral; The Wall Street Journal even ran an editorial, “Ben Carson for President.”
In “One Nation: What We Can All Do to Save America’s Future,” Dr. Carson calls for respectful discussion and disagreement, with no subjects off limits. Applying the problem-solving skills he honed as a surgeon, he takes on tough issues such as education, health care, family values, race relations, taxes, charity, and the role of faith in public life.
Avoiding the political correctness of politicians and the animosity of Washington lawyers, Dr. Carson In his journey from poverty to the top of his field, Dr. Carson has lived the American dream. He shows how we can save that dream for our future generations, by restoring a moral, informed citizenry that will support “one nation, under God, indivisible.”
Retired neurosurgeon and 2016 presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson will hold a rally at Cedarville University on Tuesday, Sept. 22 at 2 p.m. in the Dixon Ministry Center.
The event is open to the general public, but requires a ticket which can be obtained by visiting http://www.bencarson.com . Doors open at 12:30 p.m.
Cedarville University does not endorse any candidate.
Ben Carson Appears to Have No Idea What the Debt Limit Is
NATIONAL HARBOR, MD - MARCH 8, 2014: Neurosurgeon and author Ben Carson speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Photo Credit: Christopher Halloran / Shutterstock.com
He was asked four times what he thinks about the debt limit.
By Zaid Jilani October 8, 2015
A group of Republicans continue to threaten to use the U.S. debt limit — the amount of money the Treasury is allowed to borrow in order to pay for obligations already incurred — as a bargaining chip for various policy asks. They did so before in order to force a significant cut to social spending.
Dr. Ben Carson, who is running a strong second for the Republican nomination for the presidency, was on the "Marketplace" radio show [ http://www.marketplace.org/topics/elections/full-interview-dr-ben-carson-economy ] and was asked four times what he thinks about the debt limit. Carson appeared not to know what the debt limit is, confusing it with balancing the budget, which actually has nothing to do with whether the federal government can borrow to meet obligations it has already made.
"Marketplace" host Kai Ryssdal: All right, so let's talk about debt then and the budget. As you know, Treasury Secretary Lew has come out in the last couple of days and said, "We're gonna run out of money, we're gonna run out of borrowing authority, on the fifth of November." Should the Congress, then, and the president not raise the debt limit? Should we default on our debt?
Ben Carson: Let me put it this way: if I were the president, I would not sign an increased budget. Absolutely would not do it. They would have to find a place to cut.
KR: To be clear, it's increasing the debt limit, not the budget, but I want to make sure I understand you. You'd let the United States default rather than raise the debt limit.
BC: No, I would provide the kind of leadership that says, "Get on the stick, guys, and stop messing around, and cut where you need to cut, because we're not raising any spending limits, period."
KR: I'm gonna try one more time, sir. This is debt that's already obligated. Would you not favor increasing the debt limit to pay the debts already incurred?
BC: What I'm saying is what we have to do is restructure the way that we create debt. I mean if we continue along this, where does it stop? It never stops. You're always gonna ask the same question every year. And we're just gonna keep going down that pathway. That's one of the things I think that the people are tired of.
KR: I'm really trying not to be circular here, Dr. Carson, but if you're not gonna raise the debt limit and you're not gonna give specifics on what you're gonna cut, then how are we going to know what you are going to do as president of the United States?
BC: OK, let me try to explain it in a different way. If, in fact, we have a number of different areas that are contributing to the increasing expenditures and the continued expenditures that are putting us further and further into the hole. You're familiar I'm sure with the concept of the fiscal gap.
This wasn't the only economic snafu Carson hit during his interview. The interviewer repeatedly asked Carson to name specific government programs he would axe, and the candidate kept saying he would cut 3 to 4 percent without naming any sort of actual policy he would cut back on. “What I'm not gonna continue to do is supply money for everything. If you have to cut your budget by 3 to 4 percent, that automatically answers your question,” said Carson, which prompted the interviewer to give up and simply move on.
At another point in the interview, Carson was asked how he would approach the income gap. Carson said he would reduce the government debt without explaining how this would actually help reduce inequality. What was interesting was who he blamed for the very idea of suggesting that we redistribute income from the rich back to the middle and poor:
BC: I think our debt is horrendous. … And when people come along and say, “It's the rich people, it's their fault, and if we can take their money and redistribute it, somehow that's gonna solve the problem.” That's an emotional argument, and I think it appeals to our lower elements but it has nothing to do with reality.
It's unclear what Carson means when he refers to “the lower elements.”
At least the interview ended with some levity, with the interviewer asking about the Carson administration and the candidate saying he would beef up the military, get the United States back into space and confront Vladmir Putin. “And just so I'm clear, you're going to do this while balancing the budget, not raising the debt and cutting the size of government?” asked the interviewer. “Exactly,” responded Carson. “OK,” said the interviewer in a dry tone.
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson talks to CNN's Wolf Blitzer about his stance on gun control and his reaction to Kevin McCarthy dropping out of the House speaker race.
Ben Carson addresses a comment Rupert Murdoch made about him being a "real" black president. He also talks to CNN's Wolf Blitzer about Russia, Syria, and the hospital bombing in Afghanistan.
Ben Carson has asked for Secret Service protection. He believes secular progressive hoards are coming to destroy him. Cenk Uygur, host of the The Young Turks, breaks it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.
"When asked on Thursday about his campaign's request for Secret Service protection, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said that he is in danger because progressives see him as an "existential threat."
During a radio interview on WABC, host Rita Cosby noted that the Carson campaign hadrequested a Secret Service detail and asked Carson about the threats he has received.
"I’d prefer not to talk about security issues but I have recognized — and people have been telling me for many many months — that I’m in great danger because I challenge the secular progressive movement to the very core," Carson said in response, according to audio posted byBuzzfeed News.”*
Ben Carson credited a nutritional supplement for helping save his life from cancer, yet he never mentioned it during interviews about his illness until he started shilling for its manufacturer.
Carson was a spokesman for Mannatech, which claimed its “glyconutrients” could treat cancer, autism, multiple sclerosis, and AIDS. “The wonderful thing about a company like Mannatech is that they recognize that when God made us, He gave us the right fuel,” Carson said in a 2013 speech praising the company. On Wednesday, he denied any involvement with Mannatech.
At one point during Wednesday’s Republican debate, Ben Carson was asked about his involvement with Mannatech, a nutritional supplements company that makes outlandish claims about its products and has been forced to pay $7 million to settle a deceptive-practices lawsuit. The audience booed, and Mr. Carson denied being involved with the company. Both reactions tell you a lot about the driving forces behind modern American politics.
As it happens, Mr. Carson lied. He has indeed been deeply involved with Mannatech, and has done a lot to help promote its merchandise. PolitiFact quickly rated his claim false, without qualification. But the Republican base doesn’t want to hear about it, and the candidate apparently believes, probably correctly, that he can simply brazen it out. These days, in his party, being an obvious grifter isn’t a liability, and may even be an asset.
Ben Carson argues that creationism makes more sense because non-believers 'can't tell me where anything came from' Ben Carson doubled down on creationism while giving a sermon in Nashville, according to a video that was accidentally released The candidate suggested that some scientific theories require 'a lot more faith than it takes to believe in God' Carson said God encouraged him to run for president and 'put together an incredible national team' 2 November 2015 | Updated: 3 November 2015 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3300827/Ben-Carson-argues-creationism-makes-sense-non-believers-t-tell-came-from.html [with embedded videos, and comments]
Carson: 'Secular Progressives' Are Welcome To Ridicule Pyramid Theory
By Tierney Sneed Published November 5, 2015, 12:47 PM EST
Ben Carson is standing by his Egyptian pyramid theory -- that the pyramids were built by the biblical figure Joseph to store grain -- which has come under scrutiny since Buzzfeed surfaced [ http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ben-carson-pyramids ] a 1998 video of Carson referencing it.
"Some people believe in the Bible, like I do, and don't find that to be silly at all, and believe that God created the Earth and don't find that to be silly at all." Carson told reporters in Miami during a stop on his book tour. "The secular progressives try to ridicule it any time it comes up and they're welcome to do that."
"The pyramids were made in a way that they had hermetically sealed compartments. You wouldn’t need hermetically sealed compartments for a sepulcher. You would need that if you were trying to preserve grain for a long period of time,” he said, according to MSNBC [ http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/carson-egyptian-pyramid-theory-says-aliens-werent-involved ].
Carson, a political novice running for the GOP presidential nomination, made this observation in a late-night Facebook post defending his lack of political experience. As he put it:
“You are absolutely right — I have no political experience. The current Members of Congress have a combined 8,700 years of political experience. Are we sure political experience is what we need. Every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no elected office experience. What they had was a deep belief that freedom is a gift from God. They had a determination to rise up against a tyrannical King.”
Of course, the Declaration of Independence was crafted by a committee charged by the Continental Congress, which was made up of delegates who had been elected by the Colonial assemblies. But we’ll assume that Carson knew that, and instead meant that prior to being elected to Congress, the delegates had had no elected office experience. Is that correct?
The Facts
Let’s start with Thomas Jefferson, the primary writer of the Declaration of Independence. Years earlier, he had been a student at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg. As luck would have it, the House of Burgesses met there, and so Jefferson as a student was able to witness legislative debates.
The House of Burgesses evolved from the first European-style legislative assembly in the Americas, the General Assembly that was formed in 1619. And in 1769, seven years before penning the Declaration, Jefferson was elected to the House of Burgesses. As an online biography of the signers [ http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/Signers/index.htm ] said: “It was there that his involvement in revolutionary politics began. He was never a very vocal member, but his writing, his quiet work in committee, and his ability to distill large volumes of information to essence, made him an invaluable member in any deliberative body.”
Now let’s look at the other members of the drafting committee: John Adams (Mass.) was elected to the Massachusetts Assembly in 1770, Benjamin Franklin (Pa.) had been elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1751 and served as speaker in 1764, and Roger Sherman (Conn.) had been elected to the Connecticut General Assembly in 1755. Only Robert R. Livingston (N.Y.) had minimal political experience.
Of the other 51 signers of the Declaration, we count at least 27 as having at least some elected office experience, primarily in Colonial assemblies.
John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, had been elected to the Boston Assembly and had participated in the Stamp Act Congress, a gathering of elected representatives (from Colonial assemblies) to craft a response to new British tax laws. Some states sent delegations with little political experience, but every member of the seven-person delegation from Virginia had been elected to the Houses of Burgesses.
Carson spokesman Doug Watts responded: “Touche. Four Pinnochios? Or do you give credit for intent?”
The Pinocchio Test
Carson needs to hit the history books, or at least do a Google search. More than half of the signers of the Declaration of Independence had elected office experience.
Indeed, one reason why the American Revolution was successful is because it was led by men with many years in politics, political action and protest, often honed in the debates held in Colonial legislatures. In many ways, the background of the Founding Fathers undercuts the very argument Carson was trying to make.
(Update: After this fact check appeared, Carson’s Facebook post was edited to read “no federal elected office experience.” There was, of course, no “federal” government at the time.)
The political press is chortling at BuzzFeed’s story [ http://www.buzzfeed.com/natemcdermott/ben-carson-egyptian-pyramids-built-for-grain-storage-not-by ] that Ben Carson believes Egypt’s pyramids were built for grain storage, not as burial chambers. “My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain,” he said in a 1998 commencement speech, referring to Genesis 41 [ https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2041&version=NIV ], which tells of Joseph storing Egypt’s grain during the “years of plenty” for the coming famine. Carson confirmed to CBS [ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ben-carsons-unusual-theory-about-pyramids/ ] yesterday that he still believes this, but I’m not sure why this is such a big story. Before Wednesday, we knew that Ben Carson takes the Bible literally. After Wednesday, we knew the exact same thing. Frankly, I don’t care whether the president believes the pyramids were built by Joseph, aliens or the Egyptians themselves levitating the stones into place. What matters are the ideas — and that’s where the focus should be with Carson, since it’s clear he has no idea what he’s talking about.
And on Wednesday night on Facebook, Carson defended his lack of experience by claiming [ https://www.facebook.com/realbencarson/posts/549786315187839 ], “Every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no elected office experience.” That is utterly false: Many of the signatories, including Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, had been elected to colonial legislatures or other positions (and indeed were partly chosen for the Continental Congress precisely because of their prominence as elected officials). It’s one thing to be wrong about the pyramids, but Carson can’t cite the Founders both for the basic idea behind his outsider candidacy and for many of his policies when he can’t get their biographies right.
As more and more debates have passed this fall, several commentators [ http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-09-17/stop-asking-candidates-tough-questions ] have suggested [ http://www.vox.com/2015/11/4/9666788/case-for-softball-debate-questions ] moderators should retire more confrontational questions (such as “Is this a comic book campaign?” or “another candidate said something bad about you last week; please respond”) and ask more basic things like, “Should the Federal Reserve raise interest rates?” Carson’s lack of knowledge backs up this strategy: If you ask him a more confrontational question, he can just brush it off as an attack by the lamestream media. But give him a wide berth, and he’ll expose his own ignorance. Carson’s words clearly show he will trip up all by himself.
Ben Carson’s Republican policies aren’t very appealing to most African Americans. Needing the support of this key demographic, he decided to put out a political rap. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to work. Cenk Uygur, host of the The Young Turks, breaks it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.
"Ben Carson has made his contribution to the annals of awkward rap ads promoting Republican presidential hopefuls, and it's awful. The GOP front runner's new radio advertisement features some confounding rhymes—"Vote and support Ben Carson. For the next president, he’d be awesome"—to try and add some hip hop credibility to the neurosurgeon's soft-spoken way with words.
While Carson himself isn't doing any of the rapping, he did provide the somber voiceover with such lines as:
"I'm very hopeful I'm not the only one who's willing to pick up the baton of freedom, because freedom is not free and we must fight for it everyday.””*
Ben Carson Answers Questions On His Past (Full Interview) | Meet The Press | NBC News
Published on Nov 9, 2015 by NBC News
In the full "Meet the Press" interview, GOP Presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson addresses recent reporting about his time at Yale, his violent past and the presidential vetting process.
Ben Carson is a guy who’s been getting a lot of media attention because he’s currently polling first among GOP primary candidates. Also, he has a long history of lying that is now coming back to haunt him. His main defense appears to be whining about “gotcha” questions. Cenk Uygur, host of the The Young Turks, breaks it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.
"The Wall Street Journal fact-checked another claim in the retired neurosurgeon's 1990 autobiography, "Gifted Hands," and found more evidence of a potentially fabricated story. The Journal's Reid Epstein reported:
"Mr. Carson writes of a Yale psychology professor who told Mr. Carson, then a junior, and the other students in the class—identified by Mr. Carson as Perceptions 301—that their final exam papers had “inadvertently burned,” requiring all 150 students to retake it. The new exam, Mr. Carson recalled in the book, was much tougher. All the students but Mr. Carson walked out.
The professor came toward me. With her was a photographer for the Yale Daily News who paused and snapped my picture,” Mr. Carson wrote. “‘A hoax,’ the teacher said. ‘We wanted to see who was the most honest student in the class.’” Mr. Carson wrote that the professor handed him a $10 bill."
However, The Journal spoke with Yale Librarian Claryn Spies, who said that there was never a class called Perceptions 301 at the school, and a search of YDN turned up no sign of such a picture.
It's another confounding instance of inaccuracies in anecdotes about the life and belief system of Carson.”*
A tale of two Carsons NEW: Ben Carson: Names of some victims of childhood violence are 'fictitious' At the core of Ben Carson's narrative of spiritual redemption are his acts of violence as an angry young man But nine friends, classmates and neighbors who grew up with Carson told CNN they have no memory of the anger or violence the candidate has described November 5, 2015, Updated November 7, 2015 http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/05/politics/ben-carson-2016-childhood-violence/ [with embedded videos, and comments]
Watch Ben Carson Deliver A Bunch Of Word Salad On The Middle East It'll make your eyes glaze over. 11/11/2015 [...] [from the November 10, 2015 main event GOP Debate, second item this post:] "QUESTION: Dr. Carson, you were against putting troops on the ground in Iraq and against a large military force in Afghanistan. Do you support the president's decision to now put 50 special ops forces in Syria and leave 10,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan? CARSON: Well, putting the special ops people in there is better than not having them there, because they -- that's why they're called special ops, they're actually able to guide some of the other things that we're doing there. And what we have to recognize is that Putin is trying to really spread his influence throughout the Middle East. This is going to be his base. And we have to oppose him there in an effective way. We also must recognize that it's a very complex place. You know, the Chinese are there, as well as the Russians, and you have all kinds of factions there. What we've been doing so far is very ineffective, but we can't give up ground right there. But we have to look at this on a much more global scale. We're talking about global jihadists. And their desire is to destroy us and to destroy our way of life. So we have to be saying, how do we make them look like losers? Because that's the way that they're able to gather a lot of influence. And I think in order to make them look like losers, we have to destroy their caliphate. And you look for the easiest place to do that? It would be in Iraq. And if -- outside of Anbar in Iraq, there's a big energy field. Take that from them. Take all of that land from them. We could do that, I believe, fairly easily, I've learned from talking to several generals, and then you move on from there. But you have to continue to face them, because our goal is not to contain them, but to destroy them before they destroy us." [...] Allahpundit @allahpundit Still traumatized by that Carson answer on Syria and Iraq 8:11 PM - 10 Nov 2015 [ https://twitter.com/allahpundit/status/664294304244875265 ] [...] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ben-carson-middle-east-debate_5643412fe4b06037734705e1 [with embedded video, and comments]
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Dr. Ben Carson on The Sean Hannity Radio Show (11/11/2015)
On November 11th, 2015, at Convocation, North America’s largest weekly gathering of Christian students, Dr. Ben Carson spoke to students about the special nature of the American dream and the American people. He encouraged students to aspire to achieve greatness.
Dr. Ben Carson is a candidate for the Republican nomination for President and a retired neurosurgeon.
Ben Carson Wants Jail Time For Health Care Fraud -- Except For Friends
Ben Carson described Alfonso A. Costa, who was convicted of defrauding insurance companies, as "one my closest, if not my very closest friend." ASSOCIATED PRESS
"We became friends about a decade ago because we discovered that we were so much alike and shared the same values and principles that govern our lives."
By MICHAEL BIESECKER AND EILEEN SULLIVAN Posted: 11/12/2015 06:42 AM EST | Edited: 11/12/2015 10:01 AM EST
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican presidential contender Ben Carson has maintained a business relationship with a close friend convicted of defrauding insurance companies and testified on his behalf, even as the candidate has called for such crimes to be punished harshly.
Pittsburgh dentist Alfonso A. Costa pleaded guilty to a felony count of health care fraud after an FBI probe into his oral surgery practice found he had charged for procedures he never performed, according to court records.
Though the crime carries a potential sentence of up to 10 years in federal prison, Costa was able to avoid prison time after Carson helped petition a federal judge for leniency.
That's different from the position Carson took in 2013 as he prepared to launch his presidential campaign, saying those convicted of health care fraud should go to prison for at least a decade and be forced to forfeit "all of one's personal possessions."
At Costa's 2008 sentencing hearing, Carson described the dentist as "one my closest, if not my very closest friend."
"We became friends about a decade ago because we discovered that we were so much alike and shared the same values and principles that govern our lives," Carson told the judge, adding that their families vacationed together and that they were involved in "joint projects."
"Next to my wife of 32 years, there is no one on this planet that I trust more than Al Costa," Carson said.
Costa has served on the board of Carson's charity, the Carson Scholars Fund, and continues to lead the charity's fundraising efforts in the Pittsburgh area to provide $1,000 college scholarships to children in need.
Before his criminal conviction and the revocation of his license to practice dentistry, Costa built a multimillion-dollar fortune through commercial real estate. Investments Carson and his wife made through Costa earn the couple between $200,000 and $2 million a year, according to financial records that Carson was required to file when he declared his candidacy.
Costa also continues to promote his involvement with Carson's charity as part of his real estate business, prominently featuring the logo of the Carson Scholars Fund on the company's website. His son has worked with Carson's presidential campaign and a political committee founded by the retired neurosurgeon.
Doug Watts, the campaign's spokesman, said Wednesday he was unable to immediately respond to specific questions about land deals involving Carson and Costa. The AP contacted Watts on Tuesday and again Wednesday.
"I will confirm they are best friends and that they do hold business investments together," Watts said.
Costa did not respond to messages seeking comment.
The breadth of the two men's business ties has not been previously reported, partly because details can be obscured in property and incorporation records. Costa's company and its affiliates own properties in at least five states and overseas.
In 2007, a few months before Costa was charged, records show that a pair of corporations was established in Pennsylvania called BenCan LLC, and INBS LLC. Carson and his wife are listed as the sole members of the companies. Though the Carsons live outside Baltimore, the mailing address on the incorporation forms was Costa's home address in Pittsburgh.
BenCan and INBS then paid more than $3 million to purchase an office building in suburban Pittsburgh. The mailing address for the corporations listed on the deed matches the office of Costa's real estate firm, Costa Land Co.
That September, federal prosecutors charged Costa, accusing him of fraud committed over a nearly five-year period, according to court records. Investigators determined that Costa's dental practice charged more than 50 patients for procedures that had not been performed, resulting in a loss of more than $40,000 to insurance companies.
After Costa pleaded guilty, 40 of his family members, friends and dental patients wrote letters to the judge as character witnesses. Carson was one of three people who also testified at Costa's 2008 sentencing hearing, stressing his friend's charitable works and vouching for his personal integrity. Also testifying on Costa's behalf was Jerome Bettis, a beloved former Pittsburgh Stealers running back who had helped bring home a Super Bowl trophy to the city two years earlier.
The government urged the judge to make an example of Costa.
"Reduction of a sentence based on good works by a wealthy person can create the appearance that a defendant's financial resources and prominent connections can skew the justice system in ways not available to persons of lesser means," a prosecutor told the judge.
In the end, Costa got no prison time. He was sentenced to one year of house arrest and 100 hours of community service, and ordered to pay more than $294,000 in fines and restitution. Costa later got 12 months shaved off his three-year probation.
Though Costa was assigned to serve his sentence in his 8,300-square-foot mansion in nearby Fox Chapel, his lawyers repeatedly returned to court to seek permission for him to travel. A few months after starting his sentence, Costa asked to travel to the White House as one of 10 invited guests at a June 2008 ceremony where President George W. Bush presented Carson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The judge denied that request, though Costa was later allowed to take a month-long trip to the Italian coast while on probation to handle what his lawyer described as urgent business at a resort he owns.
Carson's appeal for leniency toward Costa contradicts the draconian criminal penalties he called for in his 2013 political treatise, "America the Beautiful." In his book, Carson wrote that anyone found guilty of health care fraud should face what he called the "Saudi Arabian Solution."
"Why don't people steal very often in Saudi Arabia?" Carson asked. "Obviously because the punishment is the amputation of one or more fingers. I would not advocate chopping off people's limbs, but there would be some very stiff penalties for this kind of fraud, such as loss of one's medical license for life, no less than 10 years in prison, and loss of all of one's personal possessions."
Despite the tough-on-crime message, Carson and his wife kept their investment with Costa in the years since his conviction. Tax bills for the Pittsburgh office building owned by the couple are mailed to Costa Land Co. A recent lease for a portion of the property was signed on the Carsons' behalf by the president of Costa's company.
Associated Press researcher Monika Mathur in Washington contributed to this report.
Ben Carson Is Struggling to Grasp Foreign Policy, Advisers Say
Ben Carson after a news conference in Henderson, Nev., on Monday. Credit David Becker/Reuters
Duane R. Clarridge, former C.I.A. agent and adviser to Ben Carson. Credit Mike Wintroath/Associated Press
By TRIP GABRIEL NOV. 17, 2015
Ben Carson [ http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/05/04/us/elections/ben-carson.html ]’s remarks on foreign policy have repeatedly raised questions about his grasp of the subject, but never more seriously than in the past week, when he wrongly asserted that China had intervened militarily in Syria and then failed, on national television, to name the countries he would call on to form a coalition to fight the Islamic State.
Faced with increasing scrutiny about whether Mr. Carson, who leads in some Republican presidential polls, was capable of leading American foreign policy, two of his top advisers said in interviews that he had struggled to master the intricacies of the Middle East and national security and that intense tutoring was having little effect.
Nobody has been able to sit down with him and have him get one iota of intelligent information about the Middle East,” said Duane R. Clarridge, a top adviser to Mr. Carson on terrorism and national security. He also said Mr. Carson needed weekly conference calls briefing him on foreign policy so “we can make him smart.”
As the deadly assaults in Paris claimed by the Islamic State reframe the presidential race, the candidates’ foreign policy credentials are suddenly under scrutiny. And Mr. Carson has attracted extra attention because his statements give rise to questions about where, as a retired neurosurgeon without government experience, he turns for information and counsel on complex global issues. What is unusual is the candor of those who are tutoring him about his struggle to master the subject.
In last week’s Republican debate, speaking of the turmoil in Syria, Mr. Carson said that “the Chinese are there.”
Both the White House and China denied that China had intervened militarily in Syria.
This week, Mr. Carson’s advisers said that his source for claiming Chinese involvement in Syria was a telephone conversation he had had with a freelance American intelligence operative in Iraq.
According to notes of the briefing kept by a Carson aide who was also on the line, the operative said, “Multiple reports have surfaced that Chinese military advisers are on the ground in Syria, operating with Russian special operations personnel.”
Mr. Clarridge, 83, a former C.I.A. agent who had connected Mr. Carson with the operative in Iraq, said on Monday that the information was wrong. The operative in Iraq had “overleaped” in suggesting that Chinese troops are in Syria, Mr. Clarridge said, adding of the operative, “You know how it goes when people are desperate for some headline.”
Mr. Clarridge, described by Mr. Carson’s top adviser, Armstrong Williams, as “a mentor for Dr. Carson,” is a colorful, even legendary figure [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/world/23clarridge.html ] in intelligence circles, someone who could have stepped out of a Hollywood thriller. He was a longtime C.I.A. officer, serving undercover in India, Turkey, Italy and other countries, and sprinkles his remarks with salty language. During the Reagan administration, he helped found the agency’s Counterterrorism Center and ran the C.I.A.’s Latin American division.
Indicted on charges of lying to Congress in the Iran-contra scandal (he was later pardoned), Mr. Clarridge today runs a private network of intelligence sources, including, he said, experts on Iran, China and the Middle East, who have all briefed Mr. Carson in phone calls or Skype sessions.
Mr. Clarridge, who contacted Mr. Carson nearly two years ago to offer his services without pay, has helped the candidate prepare for debates. But the briefings do not always seem to sink in, Mr. Clarridge said. After Mr. Carson struggled on “Fox News Sunday” to say whom he would call first to form a coalition against the Islamic State, Mr. Clarridge called Mr. Williams in frustration. “We need to have a conference call once a week where his guys roll out the subjects they think will be out there, and we can make him smart,” Mr. Clarridge said he told Mr. Williams.
Mr. Williams, one of Mr. Carson’s closest friends, who does not have an official role in the campaign, also lamented the Fox News interview. “He’s been briefed on it so many times,” he said. “I guess he just froze.”
Mr. Carson, 64, who retired as one the world’s foremost pediatric neurosurgeons, has sometimes struggled to adapt his thoughtful manner and speaking style to the rat-a-tat of debates and TV interviews. “Sometimes he overthinks things,” Mr. Williams said, adding that he had spoken to Mr. Carson after the Fox News stumble. “I could tell, talking to him, it was a bummer for him.”
After this article was posted online, the Carson campaign issued a statement saying The New York Times had taken advantage of Mr. Clarridge, “an elderly gentleman.” Mr. Williams had referred The Times to Mr. Clarridge, describing him as one of Mr. Carson’s top advisers on foreign policy and providing his phone number.
Once written off by political insiders, Mr. Carson has rocketed to the top tier of candidates and has traded off a lead in recent polls with Donald J. Trump.
But the stress of his ascent has revealed an inexperienced political operation and a lack of connections to informed and respected advisers. Whereas Jeb Bush can call on dozens of experts from the foreign policy establishment who once worked for the administrations of his father and brother, Mr. Carson so far has only one paid national security adviser, Robert F. Dees, a retired Army general on the staff of Liberty University in Virginia. The Carson campaign has also set up conversations between the candidate and senior foreign affairs officials from past administrations, including former secretaries of state, Mr. Williams said.
One official, Michael V. Hayden, a former C.I.A. director, described a conversation he had had with Mr. Carson to MSNBC last week. “I had one lengthy phone call with Ben Carson two months ago,” Mr. Hayden said, “and his instincts are all right, but this is a database in which he’s very unfamiliar.”
Mr. Dees, a West Point graduate whose biography lists commands in Korea and Europe, met Mr. Carson in February. He said they had since “locked ourselves up in a hotel room a couple of different sessions and took walks around the world.”
He also provides Mr. Carson with a regular national security update, with material from a group of retired military officers, business leaders and “ambassador-level type guys,” he said, some of whom the campaign plans to identify shortly.
Mr. Dees’s portrait of Mr. Carson differed from Mr. Clarridge’s. “Dr. Carson is an amazing intellect,” he said. “He has the right stuff to be commander in chief.”
On Facebook, where the campaign connects to its vast grass-roots army, two of his top campaign aides posted a video on Monday highlighting his “Fox News Sunday” interview with no hint of Mr. Carson’s private acknowledgment that he had performed poorly. The Facebook page included what it said was supporting evidence [ https://www.facebook.com/realbencarson/photos/a.143829065783568.1073741825.138691142964027/555567407943063 ] of Mr. Carson’s claim of Chinese involvement in Syria: a satellite image of a purported Chinese-made radar system in Syria, and a Syrian soldier posing on a Chinese-made armored vehicle.
But the effort to claim that Mr. Carson had meant only that there was Chinese-made matériel in Syria, not military personnel, was contradicted by his top Middle East adviser, Mr. Clarridge. Continue reading the main story
He blamed his operative, who had spoken to Mr. Carson before last week’s Republican debate. The operative, who had visited the Kurd-controlled city of Erbil in Iraq, described unconfirmed intelligence he had gleaned about disguised Russian soldiers working in Kurdistan.
“Russian special forces are staying in the Titanic Hotel in Sulaymaniya,” the operative said, according to notes recorded by Mr. Williams. “They frequent an Irish pub in the hotel bar.”
“The jump from Erbil and Soviets” to the Chinese in Damascus “is a long leap,” Mr. Clarridge said, using an ethnic slur for the Chinese.
Adviser Acknowledges Carson Struggling With Foreign Policy
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS NOV. 17, 2015, 6:42 P.M. E.S.T.
Some advisers to Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson say he is struggling to grasp the complexities of foreign policy, his closest confidant said Tuesday, acknowledging their frustration while adding the political newcomer is making progress.
"I'd say he's 75 percent of the way there," said Armstrong Williams, Carson's longtime business manager. "The world is a complex place, and he wants to get it right."
A story published Tuesday by The New York Times quoted one of Carson's advisers as saying the retired neurosurgeon, who is making his first run for public office, is having trouble understanding foreign policy despite intense briefings on the subject.
"Nobody has been able to sit down with him and have him get one iota of intelligent information about the Middle East," Duane R. Clarridge, a former CIA official, told the newspaper. Clarridge added that Carson needs weekly conference calls to brief him on foreign policy, so "we can make him smart."
The Carson campaign reacted swiftly to the Times' story, casting Clarridge in a statement as "an elderly gentleman" who isn't part of Carson's inner circle.
"He is coming to the end of a long career of serving our country. Mr. Clarridge's input to Dr. Carson is appreciated, but he is clearly not one of Dr. Carson's top advisers," said Carson spokesman Doug Watts.
But Williams, who has no official role with Carson' campaign but regularly talks to the candidate, acknowledged in an interview with The Associated Press that advisers beyond Clarridge are distressed at the pace of Carson's progress.
Williams estimates Carson has been spending "40 percent of his time" in foreign policy briefings in recent weeks.
"I know they're frustrated," Williams said of the team advising Carson. "They know that Dr. Carson is bright. He understands. ... There's just so much there."
For his part, Carson said Tuesday that he is treating his foreign policy education like medical education, diving into reading materials and discussions with experts with diplomatic and military backgrounds.
"It's an ongoing process," he said during a satellite interview with WHO-TV in Des Moines. "In medicine we have something called CME — continuing medical education — that recognizes that you never become a know it all, you always are continuing to learn."
Carson recently mistakenly suggested that China is militarily engaged in the Syrian civil war and offered sometimes meandering answers in an interview with Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace a few days after the Paris attacks.
Williams added that too much is being made of Carson's appearance on Fox News Sunday. Along with delving into the hypothetical of a shooting war with Russia, Carson demurred when Wallace pressed him on which countries he would call first in attempting to build a coalition to fight Islamic State militants.
"Of course he knows the answer to that question," Williams said, arguing that Carson was "being dismissive" because he didn't think the question was relevant to the bigger picture.
"Sometimes it's a matter of style, not substance," Williams said, adding that it's "outrageous" to suggest Carson can't name existing or potential U.S. allies.
Williams, meanwhile, told AP that Clarridge is entitled to his view, but rejected the notion that Carson is less qualified or capable than any of his rivals.
"I don't know anybody on that stage who has extensive experience in foreign affairs," Williams said, adding: "They depend on researchers. They depend on staff. They all depend on talking points."
Williams, who sometimes advises Carson on how to deal with journalists, said he spoke with the candidate Tuesday about having to engage with questioners even if he doesn't like the format or the questions.
"We had a very deep conversation today," Williams said. "He realizes he has to get better at all of it. He can and he will."
Associated Press writer Catherine Lucey in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.
Republican presidential hopeful Dr Ben Carson Getty Images
A group of migrants walks to a refugee reception centre after arriving by raft from Turkey onto the island of Lesbos
The leading Republican was speaking at a campaign event in Alabama
Andrew Buncombe, New York Thursday 19 November 2015
The debate over whether to allow Syrian refugees to settle in the US took a dark twist after a leading presidential candidate likened those fleeing the violence in the Middle East to “rabid dogs”.
Republican Ben Carson told a campaign event in Mobile, Alabama, that allowing Syrian migrants into the US could put Americans at risk.
“By the same token, we have to have in place screening mechanisms that allow us to determine who the mad dogs are, quite frankly.”
The US is riven by debate over whether or not to permit the entry of refugees fleeing Syria, which has suffered from the violence of more than four years of civil war.
President Barack Obama has said he wants to admit 10,000 refugees within a year, after close vetting.
A number of campaigners have called that figure too low and pointed to nations such as Germany that have accepted hundreds of thousands of people.
But in the US, a number of Republicans have suggested Mr Obama is allow too many to enter. The governors of more than 30 states have said they do not want refugees from Syria and will do all they can to block them.
Peggy Reilly @pegallreilledup Dear Dr. Carson: We need protection from RABID thinkers, haters like U. POTUS, Commander In Chief? HELL NO-I wouldn't trust my dog with U. 2:54 PM - 19 Nov 2015 [ https://twitter.com/pegallreilledup/status/667445801052971009 ]
On the same day that Mr Carson spoke, the US House of Representatives passed Republican-backed legislation to suspend Mr Obama’s programme to passed admit the 10,000 refugees in the next year. The president has said he would veto any such legislation.
Concern in the US about the purported danger presented by the refugees - something for which Mr Obama mocked Republicans - has intensified after an unconfirmed report that one of the Paris attackers may have entered Europe among migrants registered in Greece.
Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, denounced Mr Carson's comments as “unconscionable”, saying they pointed to a "complete disregard” for American Muslims.
“It really is unconscionable that he would stoop to such levels in smearing people who are fleeing violence and oppression, seeking a better life. Something he, himself, would do if put in the same circumstances,” he said.
Mr Carson has called for Congress to cut off funding to programs used to bring refugees into the country.
Ben Carson Thinks Giving Up Certain Torture Techniques Would Be Too PC
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson wouldn't rule out the use of torture on terrorism suspects. Mike Kittrell/Associated Press
He won't rule out waterboarding of terrorism suspects.
By Arthur Delaney Posted: 11/22/2015 11:32 AM EST
WASHINGTON -- Famed neurosurgeon and Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson wouldn't rule out torturing terrorism suspects on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" Sunday.
"There's no such thing as political correctness when you're fighting an enemy who wants to destroy you," Carson said, "and I'm not one who's real big on telling the enemy on what we're going to do and what we're not going to do."
"We should monitor anything -- mosque, church, school, you know, shopping center -- where there's a lot of radicalization going on," Carson said.
Though extensive surveillance apparently doesn't trigger any constitutional concerns for Carson, when Stephanopoulos asked about blocking people on terror watch lists from buying guns, Carson worried about the Second Amendment.
"There are a lot of people on that watch list and they have no idea of why they're on that list, they have been trying to get their names off of it and no one will give them information," Carson said. "I am a big supporter of the Second Amendment and I don't want to deprive people unnecessarily of that. There needs to be better due process."
Ben Carson Walks Back Comments About Seeing Muslims Cheering On 9/11 Presidential candidate Ben Carson said he saw newsreel footage of Muslims in the U.S. cheering on the Sept. 11 attacks, but later clarified that this was actually footage from the Middle East. Donald Trump claimed last week that "thousands of people" in New Jersey celebrated as the World Trade Center towers came down. 11/23/2015 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ben-carson-muslims-cheering_56536d9ae4b0879a5b0bf92f [with embedded video, and comments]
*
Carson camp walks back support for Trump's disputed 9/11 celebration claim Trump insisted Muslims were cheering in N.J.: "It was well covered at the time" Numerous publications and politicians have said Trump is wrong November 23, 2015 http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/23/politics/donald-trump-new-jersey-cheering-september-11/ [with embedded video report]
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note: this is part 2 of a 5-part post; part 1 is the post to which this is a reply, and part 3 follows as a reply to this post -- the following listing of "see also" links is the same in all 5 parts
Republicans may have another Goldwater on their hands.
By Jeet Heer November 25, 2015
On Monday, the John Kasich campaign released a remarkable video in which one of the Ohio governor’s supporters, Colonel Tom Moe, a Vietnam veteran and former POW, speaks against Donald Trump by paraphrasing Martin Niemoller’s famous “First they came” speech .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_... .. about the dangers of apathy in the face of Nazism. “You might not care if Donald Trump says Muslims must register with their government because you are not one,” Moe says with Midwestern calm .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=AZ-pvH6_EMM&app=desktop . “And you might not care if Donald Trump says he’s going to round up all the Hispanic immigrants, because you are not one. And you might not care if Donald Trump says it is okay to rough up black protesters, because you are not one. And you might not care if Donald Trump wants to suppress journalists, because you are not one. But think about this: If he keeps going, and he actually becomes president, he might just get around to you, and you better hope there is someone left to help you.”
-- Signal
"Will Republicans walk in the footsteps of Rockefeller and Scranton, turning their backs on Trump? Or will Nixonian expediency rule the day?" Jeet Heer --
With its implicit linkage of Trumpism with fascism, Moe’s speech puts into stark relief the question of what happens if Trump “actually becomes president.” It also poses a dilemma for Kasich himself. During the first Republican debate .. http://time.com/3988276/republican-debate-primetime-transcript-full-text/ , Kasich and all the other candidates were asked if they would promise to “support to the eventual nominee of the Republican Party and pledge to not run an independent campaign against that person.” Aside from Trump, they all said yes. Which means that Kasich—along with Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, and the rest of the field—are committed to backing Trump if he is their party’s nominee.
The Republican Party faces a nightmare scenario with Trump as its nominee, with two possible outcomes—both of which are unappetizing. The more likely possibility is that Trump could so offend the general public that the GOP would get a historic electoral drubbing to rival the 1964 defeat of Barry Goldwater, who carried only a handful of states and handed over super-majorities to Democrats in Congress and the Senate. Democrats are highly unlikely to win such super-majorities in 2016, but with the Republican ticket headed by a loudmouth bigot they could certainly pick up seats in the House and re-take the Senate.
But the other possible outcome is even worse for the GOP: Trump could win the presidency. A recent Washington Post article about panic within the Republican establishment made clear that there are leading figures in the party who are terrified at the prospect of a Trump presidency. “We’re potentially careening down this road of nominating somebody who frankly isn’t fit to be president in terms of the basic ability and temperament to do the job,” one GOP strategist told the Post .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/time-for-gop-panic-establishment-worried-carson-and-trump-might-win/2015/11/12/38ea88a6-895b-11e5-be8b-1ae2e4f50f76_story.html . “It’s not just that it could be somebody Hillary could destroy electorally, but what if Hillary hits a banana peel and this person becomes president?” Here is a Republican strategist having nightmares about a Republican candidate winning the White House.
So how would Republicans deal with Trump as their candidate? As it happens, the 1964 election offers a likely guide to how the GOP could be riven apart and where that could take the party—and American politics.
Barry Goldwater’s nomination tore the party in half because he was the avatar of a wider conservative insurgency that displaced the moderate Republicanism of President Eisenhower’s crowd. For the moderates, Goldwater was a frightening figure not only because he adopted extreme positions (opposition to the Civil Rights Act, an unwillingness to disavow the conspiracy-obsessed John Birch Society), but also for his habit of making reckless remarks .. http://www.pbs.org/opb/thesixties/topics/politics/newsmakers_3.html , like suggesting the Pentagon “lob one into the men’s room at the Kremlin.”
Before Goldwater got the nomination, GOP notables and his rivals had attacked him in the fiercest possible terms. Richard Nixon, who was in between presidential runs that year, described .. http://tinyurl.com/o8437up .. Goldwater’s opposition to civil rights as a “tragedy.” New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who was a candidate, said .. http://tinyurl.com/ohtcmja , “Barry Goldwater’s positions can spell disaster for the party and the country.” Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton, another presidential hopeful, called Goldwaterism .. http://tinyurl.com/pdx3t3s .. a “crazy quilt collection of absurd and dangerous propositions.”
Goldwater’s campaign had a profound impact on the racial composition of the Republican coalition. As historian Geoffrey Kabaservice notes in his 2012 book Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, “Many progressives and moderate Republicans did not want to participate in the Goldwater campaign in any way, shape, or form. The party’s African-American supporters were a special case in point. … African-Americans comprised only one percent of delegates and alternatives at the convention, a record low. Even so, there were some ugly incidents when Southern whites baited the blacks with insults and racial epithets and, in one case, deliberately burned a black delegate’s suit jacket with cigarettes.” Baseball star Jackie Robinson, then the most famous black Republican, said .. https://books.google.ca/books?id=Tlr7zOjQjOMC&pg=PA110&dq=scranton+goldwate&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjlrPShm6fJAhWFqB4KHd4OA2cQ6AEIKjAD#v=onepage&q=black%20delegates&f=false , “I now believe I know how it felt to be a Jew in Hitler’s Germany.”
Robinson also suggested that any black delegate who supported Goldwater would be “through in his hometown.”
Goldwater’s hard-right stance on civil rights alienated African American voters from the Republican Party in an enduring way. In 1956, 39 percent of the African American vote went to the Republicans, in 1960 it was 32 percent, and in 1964 it plummeted to 6 percent. Since Goldwater, the Republican presidential candidate has never gotten .. http://blackdemographics.com/culture/black-politics/ .. more than 15 percent of the black vote, and usually far less. A Trump nomination could have a similar effect by alienating Latinos, and perhaps all non-whites, thereby making the Republican Party even more monochromatic going forward than it already is.
As might also happen with Trump, even Republicans who publicly supported Goldwater privately acknowledged he was unfit for the position. In 1964, after Goldwater had won the nomination, Time magazine correspondent Richard Clurman asked National Review editor William F. Buckley .. http://tinyurl.com/p2b6ytr , “How does someone of your intellectual gifts become a prime supporter of a very pleasant, but obviously such a limited, man?” Buckley replied by saying, “Barry Goldwater is a man of tremendously decent instincts, and with a banal but important understanding of the Constitution and what it means in American life.” Clurman pressed the point and asked what would happen if Goldwater were elected president. “That might be a serious problem,” Buckley joked.
Buckley’s quip was entertaining, but it gets to the heart of a dilemma that the more intelligent professional Republicans and their journalistic supporters have to face: If Trump is the candidate, do they put party before country and work to elect a man they know is completely unfit for the office? Or do they break ranks and endanger their standing in the party?
These two paths also faced Republican politicians in 1964. Rockefeller and Scranton gave only nominal support to Goldwater, but made it clear they didn’t want him to win. Nixon had no more private regard for Goldwater, but he acted as a party loyalist, placing Goldwater in nomination at the convention and campaigning hard. Rockefeller and Scranton faced blighted political futures after 1964, unforgiven by the conservative wing of the party. Nixon’s loyalty was remembered and rewarded when he became the party nominee in 1968. Rubio and Ted Cruz, who’ll be hoping for a presidential future even if they lose this year, will surely be taking note.
Will Republicans walk in the footsteps of Rockefeller and Scranton, turning their backs on Trump? Or will Nixonian expediency rule the day? One clue lies in the words of Senator John McCain, whose war record Trump has insulted. McCain has said that he would support .. http:// http://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/2015/11/19/76055730/ .. whoever the Republican nominee is, and vote for Trump over Hillary Clinton. The senator ran in 2008 under the slogan “Country First.” Given his current position, he should modify that to “Party First.”
The lessons of 1964 are clear: Even a losing and divisive candidate changes the orientation of the party. After Goldwater, Nixon triumphed because he was able to co-opt many conservative movement pet causes and make them more palatable to mainstream Americans. Nixon’s Southern Strategy and use of racist dog whistles was a successful re-packaging of Goldwaterism. If Trump is the Republican nominee in 2016, he’ll transform the party even if he loses. A Trumpized Republican Party, much more xenophobic than even now, will be the new norm. And the stage will be set for a new Nixon—most likely Cruz or Rubio—to become the more polished Trump and win the White House.
Jeet Heer is a senior editor at The New Republic. @HeerJeet
Why All the Republican Party’s Presidential Candidates Believe the Same Thing Nearly every nationally prominent Republican politician owes his ideas to Barry Goldwater. By Michael Kazin
bit
Whatever you think about conservative Republicans, you have to admire their rhetorical consistency. From Goldwater to Reagan to George W. Bush to the current junior senator from Texas, nearly every nationally prominent politician on the right has upheld the same three-part credo: limited government at home, military intervention against enemies abroad, and America as God’s chosen land, which only those who cherish “traditional” religious values should govern. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/03/ted_cruz_and_other_republican_party_presidential_candidates_agree_on_almost.html
.. rebooting some 50 years later means interesting times again ..
Ted Cruz is so thrilled that someone who wants abortion providers to be killed is supporting him that he actually sent out a press release [ https://www.tedcruz.org/news/troy-newman-activist-behind-planned-parenthood-videos-endorses-ted-cruz/ ] to celebrate the endorsement. Is that what this Republican primary has come to? Presidential candidates applauding -- not denouncing -- these radically extreme positions?
Regardless of one's view on abortion rights, I would hope we can all agree that abortion providers do not deserve to be put to death for their entirely legal work. For a presidential candidate to not immediately distance himself from an endorsement from someone like Newman -- and instead to actively promote it -- is horrifying.
Sadly, though, it's indicative of just how extreme this year's Republican presidential primary has become. All of the GOP candidates have been fighting over who can be the most anti-choice, who can most restrict a woman's ability to make her own decisions.
As a lifelong activist for civil liberties and a woman's right to choose, it horrifies me that the Republicans hoping to be the next leader of the United States still attack women's rights in an attempt to get a bump in the polls from their far-right base.
Women made up 53 percent of the electorate in 2012. And not only are abortion rights the law of the land, but they're supported by 78 percent of all Americans -- which includes plenty of men and women from both parties -- who believe [ http://www.gallup.com/poll/183434/americans-choose-pro-choice-first-time-seven-years.aspx ] that abortion should be legal in at least some cases. That just doesn't seem to register with the Republican presidential candidates.
Republicans aren't only attacking abortion rights -- they're attacking women's health in general. They all support defunding Planned Parenthood, which provides birth control, cancer screenings, and other critical services to millions of people ever year. They're all outspoken critics of the Affordable Care Act, even though it enables women to access free, life-saving preventative care. The Republican candidates all oppose important economic priorities -- like raising the minimum wage or effective paid leave policies -- that would especially help women and families.
Women across the country, in particular low-income women, can't afford a president who will hack away at reproductive choices, economic mobility, and healthcare access to curry favor with the radical fringe who now are calling all the shots in the Republican party.
In our country, no one should tolerate calls to put someone to death because of his or her legal profession. It would seem that in this Republican primary, "pro-life" means only what will garner the most votes.
Ted Cruz embraces religious radicals with violent message
The Rachel Maddow Show 11/24/15
Rachel Maddow reports on the background of Troy Newman, radical anti-abortion activist embraced by Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, and notes that this is the second recent radical association by Cruz, having just spoken at an event where fellow speaker Kevin Swanson advocated the belief that the Bible justifies the execution of gay people. Duration: 8:11
Swanson introduced Cruz by stating that Jesus Christ "is king of the President of the United States whether he will admit it or not and that president should submit to His rule and to His law" before asking Cruz to share his opinion on how important it is for "the President of the United States to fear God."
Cruz, predictably, asserted that fear of God is absolutely vital, declaring [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dkVu14Q_bw (just below, as embedded; with comments)] that "any president who doesn't begin every day on his knees isn't fit to be commander-in-chief of this nation."
Cruz ducks questions about radical religious right endorsement
The Rachel Maddow Show 11/25/15
Rachel Maddow reports on Ted Cruz, Republican presidential candidate, avoiding directly addressing his association with religious extremists who cited the Bible as justifying executing homosexuals and abortion doctors. Duration: 12:09
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Wednesday, 11/25/2015 11:15 am
A member of the executive committee of the Republican Party of Texas has proposed a resolution calling for a vote during the March 1st GOP primary on whether Texas should leave the U.S.
A member of the executive committee for the Republican Party of Texas plans to introduce a resolution at the group's next meeting, which would add to the party's primary ballot a non-binding measure for Texas secession. Party leadership calls the prospect unlikely.
Tanya Robertson, State Republican Executive Committee member for Senate District 11, which covers parts of Harris, Galveston and Brazoria counties, said she'll present the resolution at the committee's December 4 meeting in Austin, and that she already has support from a few other members.
"There's been a big groundswell of Texans that are getting into the Texas independence issue," she said, citing conversations she's had with constituents. "I believe conservatives in Texas should have a choice to voice their opinion."
...
Robertson got the idea for the resolution from the Texas Nationalist Movement, a small secessionist group that has tried but so far failed to raise the necessary 75,000 signatures to put a non-binding secession vote on the March ballot. When she heard that news she thought she could help, though she isn't a member of the TNM.
The Texas Nationalist Movement, a far-right anti-government group [ http://politicalcorrection.org/factcheck/200904200002 ], is hoping to include a resolution on the March primary ballot reading: “The State of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation. FOR or AGAINST.”
By DAVID LEE Monday, November 30, 2015 Last Update: 1:18 PM PT
DALLAS (CN) - Texas has threatened [ http://www.courthousenews.com/2015/11/30/Tex%20Threat.pdf ] to kill funding and sue social services organizations if they defy Gov. Greg Abbott's refusal to accept Syrian refugees -- an order Abbott issued without the legal power to do so.
Chris Traylor, executive commissioner of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, issued the threat in a Nov. 25 letter to the International Rescue Committee in Dallas.
The threat came a week after 31 governors [ http://www.courthousenews.com/CNSNEWS/Story/Index/84321 ] - 30 of them Republican - claimed their states would refuse to accept any more Syrian refugees, though states, and governors, have no legal authority to exclude legally admitted refugees.
Citing the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris that killed more than 130 people, Abbott said, "Security comes first."
"Texas will not accept any Syrian refugees & I demand the U.S. act similarly," Abbott tweeted on Nov. 16.
In his letter to the International Rescue Committee, Traylor wrote: "Failure by your organization to cooperate with the State of Texas as required by federal law may result in the termination of your contract with the state and other legal action."
He said the International Rescue Committee had not been cooperating with Texas.
"I must ask that you fulfill your statutory duty to conduct your activities 'in close cooperation and advance consultation' with the State of Texas pursuant to section 1522 of Title 8 of the United States Code," the letter states. "If you remain unwilling to cooperate with the state on this matter, we strongly believe that a failure to cooperate with the state on this matter violates federal law and your contract with the state."
Traylor gave the group until Monday, Nov. 30, to respond.
"Rather than continue on your current path, in violation of the governor's directive, please contact my office no later than Monday, November 30, so that we can, indeed, work together 'in close cooperation' as required by federal law," the letter states.
Traylor claimed that Texas has settled 10 percent of the Syrians in the country, that 28 refugees per every 100,000 Texans were accepted last year, more per capita than in Florida, California and New York.
"Texas has shouldered its share in supporting refugees from around the world," Traylor wrote.
He said Abbott banned Syrian refugees because President Barack Obama has shown "no willingness to improve the security screenings" of refugees in spite of "the abundant evidence that the screens are ineffective."
International Rescue Committee Executive Director Donna Duvin said her group has responded to Texas, and hopes to work with it, but that it is "still anticipating a need to work" with the federal government to resettle families.
"If that needs to be done without state support, then we would be looking for resources outside of state support to make that possible," she told The Dallas Morning News.
Unlike political asylees, who generally enter the United States without permission and then apply for legal status, refugees enter the country legally after applying for refugee status at a U.S. Embassy or consulate in a foreign country. The State Department's vetting process can take up to two years.
Once a refugee is admitted to the United States, he or she is legally present here. States and governors have no more power to bar them from entering than they could bar entry to a U.S. citizen.
The Republican presidential candidate said that states should “do everything possible within the constraints that its placed upon us” to curtail abortion rights, before insisting that government officials “ignore” Supreme Court rulings if they believe they conflict with “God’s rules.”
“We are clearly called, in the Bible, to adhere to our civil authorities, but that conflicts with also a requirement to adhere to God’s rules,” he said. “When those two come in conflict, God’s rules always win. In essence, if we are ever ordered by a government authority to personally violate and sin, violate God’s law and sin, if we’re ordered to stop preaching the gospel, if we’re ordered to perform a same-sex marriage as someone presiding over it, we are called to ignore that. We cannot abide by that because government is compelling us to sin.”
Brody, unsurprisingly, took that as an endorsement of Kentucky clerk Kim Davis’ stance [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/people/kim-davis ] that she could flout the Supreme Court and refuse to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.
On Saturday afternoon, a crisis at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland came to a tragic end when student Jacob Marberger was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary. Five days prior, the school had taken the unusual step of closing down until the end of the month in response to a disturbing report from Marberger's parents.
Jacob had driven home to Pennsylvania late one evening, grabbed a rifle case, and disappeared. He was seen purchasing ammunition at a gun store shortly thereafter, but would not respond to phone calls or texts. Fearing a potential mass shooting, and erring on the side of caution, Washington College evacuated all students, faculty and staff from the campus.
When I first heard about the crisis at the college, I was deeply concerned. I participated in a panel discussion [ http://www.washcoll.edu/live/news/6956-panel-targets-gun-violence ] at Washington College on February 24 and was very impressed with the school and faculty. Then it suddenly dawned on me that I knew Jacob Marberger. He was present at that event and had a great deal to say about the topic: gun ownership and gun violence in American culture.
Joining me on the panel that evening were Maryland Institute College of Art professor of philosophy Firmin DeBrabander, the author of the book Do Guns Make Us Free? [ http://www.amazon.com/Do-Guns-Make-Free-Democracy/dp/0300208936 ]; Washington College professor of political science Melissa Deckman; and sculptor David Hess. Christine Wade, an associate professor of political science and international studies at the college, served as the moderator.
The panel "planned to expand the conversations... sparked" by an art exhibit that David had created weeks earlier for display on the campus, entitled "Gun Show." The exhibit consisted of 62 sculptures of assault weapons created out of household materials. It was David's reaction to the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.
"We have come to accept gun violence as the cost of living in a country with almost as many guns as people," he wrote [ http://www.washcoll.edu/live/news/6956-panel-targets-gun-violence ] in his artist statement for the exhibition. David hoped to provoke conversation about America's epidemic of gun violence.
He succeeded in that goal, and Jacob Marberger was part of that conversation. The 19 year-old sophomore attended the premier of David's "Gun Show" gallery exhibit on February 5 and sought out the artist to let him know he was offended by his work.
Jacob stated he was a gun owner and card-carrying NRA member and shared the following issues with David and his assistant:
1) He felt David's articulation of gun violence/gun culture seemed "unfocused"; 2) He felt the use of the term "assault weapon" for sculptures "that can't even fire bullets" was inappropriate, and he claimed the media had hijacked that term to describe any gun used in violence; 3) He accused David of using "[Everytown for Gun Safety head Michael] Bloomberg" gun death statistics to serve his agenda; 4) He was upset that the NRA's point of view was not represented in the exhibit; 5) He was outraged at the notion of gun rights in the United States being tied to white privilege.
David talked to Jacob for some time, but found him to be "adamant" and not satisfied with agreeing to disagree. At some point, David had to cut off the conversation.
A few weeks later, Jacob showed up again at our panel discussion and sat in the front right by the stage. During the Q&A session, Jacob spoke first [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giob8IHYV64 (below, as embedded; comments disabled)], asking a kind of non-question in which he opined that the National Rifle Association has widespread popular support (4 million members) while the gun violence prevention movement consists solely of big-dollar "patrons" like former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg of Everytown for Gun Safety.
When I attempted to answer and explain that Everytown has millions of average Americans as members themselves, Jacob interrupted me as I spoke. He then interrupted Melissa Deckman when she pointed out that ballot referendums on universal background checks are demonstrating broad public support for gun reform in states across the country.
It wasn't long after that that Jacob's infatuation with firearms destroyed his reputation and got him into serious criminal trouble.
Jacob's father described his son as "an intellectual and conscientious young man," and by all accounts, he was exactly that. He was the speaker of his college's Student Senate, active in theater, and a member of a campus fraternity, Phi Delta Theta. But he began to drift into crisis in early October when he reported [ http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Jacob-Marberger-Suicide-Washington-College-Hawk-Mountain-Cheltenham-352949961.html ] two other Student Government Association (SGA) members to school administrators for texting sexually inappropriate comments about a woman in the group. Both students lost their jobs, and some members of Jacob's fraternity began to retaliate against him for not going directly to the SGA members with his concerns. Around this time, someone pranked Jacob by leaning a trash can full of water against his dorm room door so that when he opened it, the water spilled into his room.
On October 7, Jacob got drunk at a party at his frat house -- so much so that his fraternity brothers carried him up to his room 4-5 times during the party, hoping he would sleep it off. But he kept coming back downstairs, and the final time he did so, he was carrying a .22-caliber seven-shot revolver, an antique. He brandished it over his head and ranted about something that it is still not entirely clear. There are some indications he might have been hazing a fraternity pledge [ http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2015/11/16/gun-threat-at-washington-college/ ] with the pistol.
The fraternity decided to remain silent about the matter, but three weeks later, the college figured out what happened and recovered the pistol from a house off-campus. Jacob was suspended from the college and kicked out of his fraternity. The Chestertown Police also filed gun charges [ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/maryland-college-closed-amid-search-for-missing-student-who-may-be-armed/ ] against him, including possession of a dangerous weapon, possession of a weapon and ammunition on school property, and possession of a firearm as a minor. He was back in class on November 9 after a forensic psychiatrist determined he was not a threat to himself or others, but disappeared just a week later.
There is no doubt that Jacob's embrace of a degenerate gun culture promoted by the National Rifle Association (to sell guns) played a direct role in his death. That culture preaches extreme faith in the power of firearms to solve problems.
Feeling scared? "Buy a gun." Feeling slighted? "Buy a gun." Don't like what the government is doing? "Buy a gun."
There are two things that need to be gleaned from this tragedy to ensure that we don't spend our future mourning additional Jacob Marbergers:
Number one, forcing colleges and universities to allow guns on their campuses is a colossally bad idea that can only lead to additional gun death and injury. One couldn't imagine a more disastrous setting for firearms proliferation, given that young people like Jacob are frequently on their own for the first time at college and experiencing high levels of stress (to say nothing of alcohol and substance abuse).
Number two, guns do not make us free, or supercitizens, or safe. More typically, they destroy families, like the Marberger family has been destroyed. The NRA will continue to attempt to recruit young men like Jacob into the gun culture (even employing pseudo-hipster propaganda through programs like "Noir [ http://www.youtube.com/user/MrColionNoir ]"); that much we know. It therefore falls upon the rest of us to teach young Americans that guns will never be a solution to what ails them, either personally or politically.
Author's Note: In writing this piece, I consulted with David Hess and Firmin DeBrabander to make sure I was accurately citing their recollections of the evenings of February 5, 2015 and February 24, 2015.
Rafael Cruz: 'Praise God There Are 300 Million Guns In America'
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Tuesday, 11/3/2015 12:15 pm
In a speech in Minnesota last month, Ted Cruz’s father and campaign surrogate Rafael Cruz [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/people/rafael-cruz ] declared that President Obama is on the cusp of confiscating people’s guns, which is why it’s a good thing Americans own so many firearms.
The elder Cruz managed to turn the subject to guns after he fielded a question about whether the federal government should crack down on states like Colorado that have legalized marijuana. Cruz said that the federal government must enforce its drug laws in such situations because, as he explained, the people of Colorado want them to, even though a referendum legalizing marijuana passed with 55 percent of the vote.
This led him to rail against President Obama for considering executive actions on gun law reform, which he cited as another case of the administration flouting the law.
“He’s talking about doing an executive order to put gun control because he can push gun control,” he said [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bh7mXZsq7A (below, as embedded; with comments)]. “Let me tell you something about gun control. Look at history. Every king or dictator that has taken the guns away from the population then use it against the population. But praise God there are 300 million guns in America in the hands of private citizens and I don’t know a single one that is willing to give those guns back to the government.”
Cruz went on to allege [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fHimm9hzu8 (below, as embedded; with comments)] that “the violence and the racial strife that we are seeing” has been “fueled by this administration,” claiming that the demonstrators in Ferguson, Missouri, were flown in from across the country.
“This administration wants to create strife,” he said. “The whole concept of social justice is all about dividing everybody into a series of smaller groups, make every group seem like a victim and put one group against the other. They are trying to create this strife.”
He said that the president is doing this because he is following Saul Alinsky’s book “Rules for Radicals,” warning that Hillary Clinton will similarly implement this Alinskyite plot. The solution, he said, is to “stop this concept of hyphenated Americans and get back to ‘we’re all Americans.’”
Colorado Springs, Site Of Planned Parenthood Attack, Is A Hub For Conservative Christians
Activists have reportedly been demonstrating at the site of the attack for years.
By Sam Levine Posted: 11/28/2015 09:07 PM EST
Colorado Springs, the town where three people were killed and nine injured in an attack on a Planned Parenthood facility on Friday, is a hub for Christian evangelicals who are opposed to abortion.
Activists against abortion have long picketed at the Planned Parenthood clinic on Fridays for years, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette [ http://gazette.com/colorado-springs-planned-parenthood-protester-dismayed-by-shooting/article/1564455 ]. Joseph Martone Jr., a frequent protester at the clinic, told the Gazette that about 70 people gather near the clinic on Thursdays and Fridays, the days when he said abortions are performed, to pray for an end to the procedure.
"This is the curse of God upon America for our sin of not protecting innocent children in the womb," Klingenschmitt said at the time. "Part of that curse for our rebellion against God as a nation is that our pregnant women are ripped open."
Trump: Planned Parenthood shooting suspect a ‘maniac’
By Kyle Balluck November 29, 2015, 09:40 am
GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Sunday rejected the notion that heated rhetoric in the Planned Parenthood debate contributed to the fatal shooting spree at a clinic in Colorado Springs, Colo.
“I think it's terrible. I mean, terrible. It's more of the same. And I think it's a terrible thing. He's a maniac,” Trump said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“I think he's a sick person,” he added. “And I think he was probably a person ready to go. We don't even know the purpose. I mean, he hasn't come out, to the best of my knowledge, with a statement as to why it happened to be at that location.”
“This was a man who they said prior to this was mentally disturbed,” he said. “So, he's a mentally disturbed person. There's no question about that.”
Trump did, however, cite “tremendous dislike” for Planned Parenthood.
“Well, I will tell you there is a tremendous group of people that think it's terrible, all of the videos that they've seen with some of these people from Planned Parenthood talking about it like you're selling parts to a car. I mean, there are a lot of people that are very unhappy about that,” he said.
“I see a lot of anxiety and I see a lot of dislike for Planned Parenthood. There's no question about that.”
His campaign issued a press release last week that read: “Mr. Trump will be joined by a coalition of 100 African-American evangelical pastors and religious leaders who will endorse the GOP front-runner after a private meeting at Trump Tower.”
So, what went wrong?
Many of those invited to the event say they had no intention of endorsing the billionaire businessman and former reality television star.
What theology do you believe Mr. Trump possesses when his politics are so clearly anti-Black? He routinely engages in the kind of rhetoric that brings out the worst sorts of white racist aggression, not only toward Black people, but also toward Mexican-Americans and Muslim-Americans, too. Surely, we can agree that this kind of unloving and violent language does not reflect the politics of the Christ we profess?
Mike Huckabee Calls Planned Parenthood Shooting 'Domestic Terrorism'
"What he did is domestic terrorism, and what he is did is absolutely abominable."
By Igor Bobic Posted: 11/29/2015 11:11 AM EST | Edited: 11/29/2015 11:29 AM EST
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) addressed the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooting, in which two civilians and a police officer were killed when a gunman opened fire at the women's health clinic on Friday.
The Republican presidential hopeful, an evangelical Christian known for his firm stance against abortion, became just one of few GOP presidential contenders to address the shooting over the weekend. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) also offered their condolences to the victims. Many of the other candidates vying for the Republican presidential nomination, however, were noticeably silent [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/republicans-2016-planned-parenthood-shooting_5659b750e4b072e9d1c1fb6a ] about the matter.
Huckabee addressed the shooting Sunday in an interview on CNN's "State of the Union."
“Well, we don't know fully what the facts are," he said. "They're still being determined. We don't even know some of the victims' names yet. But regardless of why he did it, what he did is domestic terrorism, and what he is did is absolutely abominable, especially to those of us in the pro-life movement, because there's nothing about any of us that would condone or in any way look the other way at something like this."
Mike Huckabee condemned the attack as a "despicable act of murder" and said "what he did is domestic terrorism," but then equated the killings to the abortions Planned Parenthood provides.
"There's no excuse for killing other people, whether it's happening inside the Planned Parent headquarters, inside their clinics, where many millions of babies die, or whether it's people attacking Planned Parenthood," Huckabee said on CNN's "State of the Union."
Fiorina: It's 'Left-Wing' To Link Planned Parenthood Attack To Videos
There's no connection between rhetoric and violence, says the Planned Parenthood opponent.
By Paul Blumenthal Posted: 11/29/2015 12:25 PM EST | Edited: 11/30/2015 11:32 AM EST
WASHINGTON -- Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina declared on "Fox News Sunday" that attempts to link anti-abortion rhetoric from Republicans to Friday’s attack on a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs, Colorado, were just “typical left-wing tactics.”
“This is so typical of the left to immediately begin demonizing a messenger because they don’t agree with the message,” Fiorina said.
Fiorina has been one of the most forceful Republican candidates in denouncing Planned Parenthood after heavily edited undercover videos [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/14/sting-video-planned-parenthood_n_7797164.html ] were released supposedly showing Planned Parenthood staff discussing the provision of fetal tissue samples for research purposes.
She has said the women's health organization sells “baby parts” and claimed to have seen a video [ http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/09/planned-parenthood-fetus-video-carly-fiorina ] showing its staff discussing harvesting the brain of a fully formed fetus. The alleged Planned Parenthood shooter, 57-year old Robert Dear, reportedly mentioned “baby parts” to investigators.
Abortion rights groups: Political rhetoric contributed to shooting
A member of the New York Police Department stands outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Manhattan. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters)
By Sandhya Somashekhar November 29, 2015
To many abortion rights advocates, it seemed only a matter of time before something like this happened.
Ever since the summer, when an antiabortion group accused Planned Parenthood of illegally selling fetal tissue, threats against the organization had escalated to unprecedented levels, abortion providers say. They stepped up collaboration with the FBI and local police and stiffened security at clinics. But on Friday, their worst fears came true: A man walked into a health center in Colorado Springs and opened fire.
Abortion rights advocates say the connection is clear. Over the summer, a little-known antiabortion group called the Center for Medical Progress released a series of covertly filmed videos purporting to show that Planned Parenthood illegally sells fetal tissue, or “baby parts,” as abortion foes refer to it, for research. The century-old nonprofit agency has denied wrongdoing, and state and congressional investigations have so far failed to produce proof supporting the allegations.
Nevertheless, the casual and sometimes graphic conversations about abortion procedures captured on the videos have provided fodder for conservatives on Capitol Hill, in governor’s mansions and on the presidential campaign trail to seek to strip the organization of government funding. The efforts have led to sometimes passionate commentary on the part of conservatives and Republicans against abortion and sharply critical of Planned Parenthood, striking a tone that abortion rights advocates say created an atmosphere that put clinic workers and patients at risk.
‘An evil act’
Antiabortion groups were quick to condemn the shooting and assert that, despite often impassioned and emotional language, their years-long campaign is about saving lives, not taking them. They emphasized that there was still no clear explanation for the shooting, which was carried out by a man who was known by friends and acquaintances as a malcontent who often clashed with neighbors and had encounters with police. Grass-roots activists connected with the antiabortion movement said they did not know Dear and that his name was not familiar.
“Our prayers and concern are with the victims today of the Colorado Springs shooting, people who did not deserve such violence,” Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, an antiabortion group, said in a statement Saturday. “While we don’t know all the details of this horrific event, we know that it was an evil act, one condemned by pro-life Americans nationwide.”
But Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, a professional association for abortion providers, said the antiabortion rhetoric had grown so heated in recent months that something like this was bound to happen.
“They have ignited a firestorm of hate. They knew there could be these types of consequences, and yet they ratcheted up the rhetoric and ratcheted it up and ratcheted it up,” Saporta said. “It’s not a huge surprise that somebody would take this type of action.”
On the Sunday morning talk shows, Republican presidential hopefuls walked a fine line, condemning the attack while also defending the criticism heaped on Planned Parenthood. On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” real estate mogul and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump called the shooter “mentally disturbed” and reiterated the complaints about Planned Parenthood. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, also a Republican hopeful, decried “extremism on both sides,” on ABC’s “This Week.”
On “Fox News Sunday,” former Hewlett Packard chief Carly Fiorina called the shooting “obviously a tragedy,” adding, “nothing justifies this.” In the past, she has accused Planned Parenthood of “butchering babies for body parts [ http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/05/carly-fiorinas-planned-parenthood-playbook/ ].” But the Republican presidential candidate resisted the notion that the fiery rhetoric contributed to the shooting.
“This is so typical of the left to immediately begin demonizing a messenger because they don’t agree with the message,” she said. “The vast majority of Americans agree [that] what Planned Parenthood is doing is wrong.”
But abortion rights advocates say the videos have also led to a spike in threats against the organization — with a worst-case scenario unfolding in Colorado Springs.
“Politicians need to stop escalating the rhetoric against Planned Parenthood, and that means by and large the Republican Party,’’ said Laura Chapin, a pro-abortion rights political communications consultant and former press secretary to former Colorado governor Bill Ritter (D). “Right-wing politicians need to back off.’’
Saporta called the Colorado Springs shooting the deadliest such attack in history because it led to three fatalities. With Friday’s tragedy, she said, the death toll from antiabortion violence has risen to 11. The last such incident at an abortion clinic occurred in 2009, when a gunman shot and killed George Tiller, a Kansas doctor who performed the procedure late in a pregnancy.
Previously, Saporta said, her organization used internal staff to track threats to report to law enforcement. But the volume got so high that she contracted with an outside security firm to monitor threats 24 hours a day, she said. The company now provides her organization with daily reports, with the results reported routinely to the FBI and local police.
Tight security at clinics
Strict security measures have become the norm at abortion clinics, which often have bulletproof glass, surveillance systems, security guards and volunteer escorts to usher patients through a gantlet of antiabortion demonstrators. Staff members are advised to keep unlisted phone numbers and to vary their commutes. Many clinics have moved into more private buildings, with underground parking to prevent demonstrators outside from snapping pictures of workers’ faces or license plates as they arrived at the office.
The Colorado Springs clinic has security cameras inside and outside the building, and workers are trained on how to deal with situations such as an active shooter, said Vicki Cowart, president of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains. She credits this training with the fact that none of the 15 staff members were wounded Friday, and likely none of the patients as well, she said.
Saporta drew special attention to the group that filmed the undercover Planned Parenthood videos. Two of the videos were shot at a clinic in Denver, about 75 miles north of Colorado Springs. The videos sparked an onslaught of threats against one doctor featured in those videos, who has since moved out of her home and hired round-the clock security, Saporta said.
David Daleiden, project leader for the Center for Medical Progress, did not respond to a request for comment over the weekend. But Troy Newman, who sits on the board of directors, defended the project, which he said shed light on a matter of intense public interest.
Newman is president of Operation Rescue, an organization that is often present outside abortion clinics to document instances in which an ambulance has to be called and posts information about abortion providers, including their pictures, online. He has described abortion doctors as “butchers” and has called women who obtain abortions “murderesses,” and the vice president of his organization served two years in federal prison for conspiring to damage a clinic.
But he said his actions are not incitements for violence but rather “truth-telling” in the face of a corrupt industry.
“There’s a frustration that all of us experience from a lack of prosecution of Planned Parenthood by the federal authorities, but that frustration should never be taken to the point of extremism where people are killed as a result,” he said.
The mayor of Colorado Springs said it “certainly appears” the shooting and standoff at a Planned Parenthood clinic that left three dead Friday was an act of domestic terrorism.
Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers would not comment on a motive for the shooting. Police haven’t released a possible motive or said whether the clinic was the intended target.
“We have a person that’s pretty much off the grid and acting for whatever motivation,” Suthers said on ABC’s “This Week.” “[It’s] very hard to ferret out those folks.”
Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, a Democrat, called the shooting a “form of terrorism” on CNN’s “State of the Union,” and urged the country to find ways “to make sure we keep guns out of the hands of people that are unstable.” Colorado has been the site of two other mass shootings, at Columbine High School in 1999 and at a movie theater in Aurora in 2012.
What he did is domestic terrorism, and what he did is absolutely abominable, especially to us in the pro-life movement, because there’s nothing about any of us that would condone or in any way look the other way on something like this.
Law enforcement sources told ABC News that Dear made rambling comments during the incident, some of which suggested animosity toward the health care provider. They said the Justice Department is building a domestic terrorism case against Dear, though it would only move forward if somehow the state capital case was sidetracked.
Ted Cruz Defends Conservative Criticisms of Planned Parenthood After Shooting at Clinic
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas at a campaign stop in Newton, Iowa, on Sunday. Credit Scott Morgan for The New York Times
By Matt Flegenheimer November 30, 2015
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, chafing at the suggestion that conservative criticisms of Planned Parenthood might have played a role in the attack at a Colorado clinic [ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/28/us/colorado-planned-parenthood-shooting.html ] on Friday, lashed out on Sunday at the “vicious rhetoric on the left, blaming those who are pro-life.”
Speaking to reporters in Newton, Iowa, Mr. Cruz said “we don’t fully know the motivations of this deranged individual” in the shooting, which killed three people and wounded nine.
Mr. Cruz added, without prompting, that the suspected gunman, Robert L. Dear Jr., was “registered to vote as a woman.” He suggested that there was “very little evidence” tying the shooting to anti-abortion sentiment, a cause frequently invoked by Mr. Cruz and his fellow Republicans in the presidential primary.
When a reporter cited news reports that Mr. Dear had said “no more baby parts” after he was apprehended, Mr. Cruz replied, “Well, it’s also reported that he was registered as an independent and as a woman and a transgender leftist activist.”
Aides to Mr. Cruz said he was not saying with certainty that the gunman was a “transgender leftist activist,” but rather highlighting how little was known about him definitively.
“He was making the point that there isn’t enough information,” Rick Tyler, a campaign spokesman, said. “You can’t expect a full response to a story that’s developing. The point was there’s a lot of raw information going around that’s not confirmed.”
Asked what news reports Mr. Cruz was referring to, a spokeswoman, Catherine Frazier, pointed to a website called therightscoop.com. Its post [ http://therightscoop.com/was-the-colorado-shooter-a-transgender-person/ ], titled “Was the Colorado shooter a TRANSGENDER person?!?!,” said there were voting records in which a Robert L. Dear Jr. was identified as female.
Over the weekend, Mr. Cruz was initially one of the few Republican candidates to address the shooting, calling it a tragedy but declining to refer directly to Planned Parenthood.
When a reporter reminded Cruz it has been reported Dear made a comment about “baby parts” while being apprehended, Cruz retorted, “It’s also been reported that he was registered as an independent and a woman and a transgendered leftist activist. If that’s what he is, I don’t think it’s fair to blame on the rhetoric on the left. This is a murderer.”
“He believed wholeheartedly in the Bible,” she said. “That’s what he always said; he read it cover to cover to cover.” But he was not fixated on it, she added.
He was generally conservative, but not obsessed with politics. He kept guns around the house for personal protection and hunting, and he taught their son to hunt doves, as many Southern fathers do. He believed that abortion was wrong, but it was not something that he spoke about much. “It was never really a topic of discussion,” she said.
A crazy person gets a gun and walks into a Planned Parenthood clinic and murders innocent people. Some people then say it is probably time to take a hard look at both our gun control policies and the unscrupulousness of anti-abortion politicians and activists [ http://gawker.com/no-planned-parenthood-is-not-selling-aborted-fetal-bod-1717823538 ]. Some other people accuse them of politicizing a tragedy, all the while delivering to their lunatic constituents a wholly manufactured persona of the perpetrator, for the sole purpose of insulating their deranged politics from their very real consequences.
On Nov. 29, 1992, Dear showed up to the woman’s house while she attempted to take out the trash, according to the police report. He then put a knife to her throat, forced her back into the residence, onto her couch and then struck her in the mouth before sexually assaulting her, the report states.
Dear has been married at least three times and has four children. His second wife, Barbara Mescher, said she knew of the rape allegation in her divorce affidavit, and also said that she “lived in fear” of her husband.
“He claims to be a Christian and is extremely evangelistic, but does not follow the Bible in his actions,” Mescher stated in the affidavit. “He says that as long as he believes he will be saved, he can do whatever he pleases. He is obsessed with the world coming to an end.”
Ted Cruz Has the Facts: The Liberal Media, Democrats, and Violent Criminals Are In Cahoots
Photo via AP
Chris Thompson 11/30/15 8:14pm
Even within the context of this upended-Gathering-of-the-Juggalos-outhouse of a presidential election cycle, Ted Cruz’s crescendoing spingasm on the Planned Parenthood shooting is shocking and bizarre. This really could go anywhere.
—which, I understand, is a radio show hosted by Hugh Hewitt, who, I understand, is a conservative who concerns himself with the so-called liberal bias in media, which is unfortunate, because while having a healthy imagination is a good thing, living entirely inside it is generally thought to be somewhat unhealthy. At any rate, Ted Cruz has some thoughts about the gotdang liberal media, reports [ http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/261572-cruz-most-violent-criminals-are-democrats ] The Hill. Man oh man does he ever.
Take it away, Ted:
“Here is the simple and undeniable fact – the overwhelming majority of violent criminals are Democrats.”
Yes, mmmmm, do go on with more of these facts.
“There is a reason why for years the Democrats have been viewed as soft on crime,” Cruz continued. “They go in and appoint to the bench judges who release violent criminals.
“They go in and fight to give the right to vote to convicted felons,” the 2016 GOP presidential candidate added. “Why?
“The Democrats know that convicted felons tend to vote Democrat. The media never reports on any of that. [It] doesn’t want to admit any of that.”
Hard to argue with such facts as these. Harder, still, to believe Cruz continued speaking without Earth being flushed down the cosmic toilet once and for all:
“Every time you have some sort of violent crime or mass killing you can almost see the media salivating, hoping, hoping desperately that the murderer happens to be a Republican so that they can use it to try and paint their political enemies,” he said.
“You can see that every time there’s a terrible crime they’re so excited – ‘come on, please be a Republican so we can try and paint the other side,’” Cruz said. “It is one of the more egregious examples of media bias and something we see over and over again.”
Cruz in questionable company, offers bizarre response to shooting
The Rachel Maddow Show 11/30/15
Rachel Maddow outlines the context of the history of threats and attacks on abortion providers and facilities across the United States, and reviews what little is known so far about the Colorado Springs shooter, and singles out Republican senator and presidential candidate, Ted Cruz, for his bizarre, distinctly unpresidential response to the tragedy. Duration: 20:00
Increased threats correspond to new Planned Parenthood bashing
The Rachel Maddow Show 11/30/15
Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, talks with Rachel Maddow about Friday's deadly shooting at a Colorado Planned Parenthood, the security measures clinics are forced to take, and the recent increase in violence and threats as Republicans have amplified anti-abortion extremists' opposition to Planned Parenthood. Duration: 7:11
13-Year-Old Teenage Person Ditches Conservatism, Hopefully For Video Games and Sleepovers
Screenshot via YouTube
Chris Thompson 11/29/15 6:39pm
You know, the thing about precocious kids is, they’re awful.
Kids are better when they’re playing video games, picking their noses, making paper people, collecting baseball cards, etc. Kids who insert themselves into the adult world without appropriate humility and deference are jerks, in the same way an adult who opines passionately in a conversation about something about which they’re generally under-informed is a jerk.
So. It is for young people to be stupid and loud and obnoxious. One of the things about maturing into adulthood, right up there with shaving and voting and buying a beer in a bar with your own ID, is the wisdom and perspective to know that young people are stupid and loud and obnoxious, but it’s OK, the thing to do is nod and smile and then roll your eyes and mostly ignore them until they, too, can shave and vote and buy a beer in a bar with their own ID. We make room in the world for young people to be stupid and loud and obnoxious without any real consequences, because we are grownups. We do our best to chaperone them through their own stupidity so that they might one day appreciate just how stupid they once were.
Then there’s Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz saw a 13-year-old ranting semi-coherently on YouTube, challenging the patriotism of a person who is the actual President of the United States, and thought “hmmm, yes, here is a person that I should attach to my campaign.” Because politicians, you see, are the most desperate, cynical people on earth, and it turns out they are never worse than when they’re running a largely irrelevant campaign for President among a field of clowns and lunatics. Ted Cruz named CJ Pearson [ https://www.tedcruz.org/news/cruz-names-cj-pearson-as-national-chairman-of-teens-for-ted/ ] National Chairman of something called “Teens for Ted.” Ugh.
CJ Pearson told CNN on Friday that concerns about the Republican Party’s viewpoints on racial and gender disparity as well as youth issues convinced him he could no longer be a mouthpiece for conservatism.
[...]
The 13-year-old, African-American YouTube star from Georgia said in an interview that he began considering the change after a conversation with another teen friend, who asked why he doesn’t speak out on racial discrimination — to which he replied he was concerned his followers wouldn’t be pleased.
A small, cold part of me wants to laugh at the fact that close affiliation with the Cruz campaign was enough to turn this kid away from conservatism altogether. Then I read this:
“I don’t want to be the conservative wonder kid that people follow because I make them feel good and like young people are part of their movement. I want to be followed because I’m the voice of a generation that doesn’t have a voice at the table.”
CJ. Stop trying to be the voice of things. You do not need followers. You are a kid. It’s good that you’re smart, it’s good that you’re articulate, it’s good that you’re plugged in and aware of the world around you. You got a bike? Some friends? They got bikes? Go ride bikes. You’ve got the whole rest of your life to be miserable about American politics. No one needs a head start on that.
While it is typical for a politician to suggest that “both sides” are to blame for toxic rhetoric and political dysfunction, Carson may want to look back on his own record of statements about Planned Parenthood.
The former neurosurgeon noted that he changed his mind about abortion after realizing it was like “slavery.”
“I was thinking about slavery and I was thinking about the abolitionists, and I said, what if the abolitionists had said, ‘I don’t believe in slavery but anybody else can do whatever they want’?” Carson declared. “Where would we be today?”
“Slavery is a moral issue and so is abortion,” he insisted. “It’s a moral issue that we’re dealing with.”
He made the same case in an NBC interview [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/10/25/ben-carson-likens-abortion-to-slavery-wants-to-see-roe-v-wade-overturned/ ]: “During slavery — and I know that's one of those words you're not supposed to say, but I'm saying it — during slavery, a lot of the slave owners thought that they had the right to do whatever they wanted to that slave, anything that they chose to do. And what if the abolitionists had said: 'You know, I don't believe in slavery. I think it's wrong, but you guys do whatever you want to do'? Where would we be?”
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson speaks Nov. 19 in Mobile, Ala. His supporters see a humble man of God — and say the nation needs to be rescued by a godly leader. (Mike Kittrell/Associated Press)
Toni and Mike Ledet at their Montrose, Ala., home. “I’m afraid,” Toni said. “I’m really and truly afraid.” (Max Becherer/Polaris Images)
Carson greets supporters after speaking in Mobile. During the rally, when he talked about the Lord’s plan for his candidacy, someone yelled “Amen!” (Mike Kittrell/Associated Press)
video [embedded]: Carson explains 'rabid dog' metaphor for Syrian refugees After filing to run in the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary, candidate Ben Carson attempted to clarify statements he made the day before likening refugees fleeing violence in Syria to "rabid dogs." (2:08) (Reuters)
video [embedded]: Ben Carson on his faith, the Apocalypse and Hell In a one-on-one with The Washington Post, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson discusses what it means to be a Seventh-day Adventist, when the Apocalypse will come, and whether Hell is real. (4:18) (Alice Li/The Washington Post)
By Stephanie McCrummen November 30, 2015
MONTROSE, Ala. — She had known exactly what Ben Carson meant when he spoke of leaders who are trying to “destroy America.” That meant President Obama. She had understood perfectly when he spoke of all the “secular progressives who don’t like Judeo-Christian values” and “want to destroy your family.” That meant all the liberals who would ridicule Christians like her.
And when Carson said at a rally in Mobile on Nov. 19 that God himself had opened his path to the presidency, Toni Ledet, 59, cheered with the crowd of hundreds.
“Christians are tired of what’s going on — they want a leader with strong faith,” she said that night, and now she was home with her husband, Mike, 57, saying something else that explains the deep-rooted appeal of the famed neurosurgeon, even as some recent polls show his popularity slipping.
“I’m afraid,” Toni began, sitting on her front porch in Montrose. “I’m really and truly afraid.”
But to see Carson from Mike and Toni Ledet’s front porch, the reverse is true: To them, Carson is the only candidate who fully grasps what they see as the one reality that matters most — that America has fallen away from God. And while other Republican contenders express some version of that sentiment, Toni says it is Carson who seems both the closest to God and the furthest from Obama, who troubles her deeply.
“I think there is going to be an issue in the near future,” she says, sitting in her rocking chair. “He’s got, what, eight months left in his term?”
“A year,” says Mike, a doctor, sipping a glass of water.
“Still, that’s the short term,” says Toni, a fiction writer. “I think he’s staging a certain situation for himself before he leaves office. I think he’s preparing this country to suit his benefit — i.e. refugees, medical issues, gun laws .?.?. ”
She stops herself and smiles, not wanting to explain further.
“He’s weakening the country is how I’d put it,” Mike says.
“Oh, he’s weakening the country all right,” Toni says.
The Ledet home is brick with six white columns on a street lined with oaks and pines smothered in Spanish moss. Inside for the holidays are the couple’s four children, ages 17 to 37, each of whom has a copy of “Jesus Calling [ http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0529100770 ],” the daily Christian devotional that Mike and Toni read together every morning in a life where God is real and Satan is real and the evidence of both is everywhere they look, especially now.
In the life of Ben Carson, they see a man in tune with the will of God.
“He has to have a higher power to do what he does,” says Toni, who saw the movie version on a Christian TV channel. “Anybody would know that.”
In the life of Obama, the Ledets see Carson’s opposite.
“I just don’t trust him,” Mike says.
“He wasn’t honest with the American people when he was elected — there was a lot of subject matter hidden and not brought forth,” Toni says. “That’s my opinion. So.”
She stops herself again because she knows how she might sound, and what people might think, and it makes her feel uncomfortable.
But then she decides she is sick and tired of feeling uncomfortable, which is how she’s felt ever since Obama’s election — and why she decided to go to the Carson rally two days before.
It was her first presidential candidate rally, and as she arrived and saw hundreds of people waving signs that read “Heal” and “Inspire,” she realized she was not the only one feeling sick and tired.
She settled into her seat in the arena, now full of people like Wanda Brooks, a retiree with blond hair, red nails and a “Foxy Ladies Vote Republican” button who said she loves Carson because he is not afraid to stand up for his Christian beliefs, which made her feel like standing up for hers.
“I know it’s not politically correct to say,” she began. “But every nation that has fallen has fallen because they are anti-God. We have no future if we keep going like this. Except beheadings.”
Nearby was Mike Wilson, 49, who said he loves that Carson is “not afraid to offend people” by talking about the thing that worries him most: “radical Muslims.”
“President Obama won’t say ‘radical Muslims,’?” Wilson said. “But there is a fraction of people that hate Americans, and they are radical Muslims.”
“If we don’t have godly people running the country, we are going to be in trouble,” said a woman named Aurelia, who didn’t want to give her last name and whose comment elicited nods from the people sitting around her, including a pale young woman named Kinsley who said only a godly person could stand up to Muslim terrorists.
“If we continue like this we run the risk of a serious attack — or a takeover,” said Kinsley, who wouldn’t give her last name, either. Her face was grim. Her arms were folded. “They could be anywhere,” she said of the terrorists. “They could be anyone.”
Brooks leaned in closer and decided to say what “anyone” meant to her. “We don’t have a president that cares about our nation,” she yelled over the music. “I believe he’s a Muslim and wanting Muslims to take over our nation. One nation under Allah instead of one nation under God! But if everyone prays and turns from their wicked ways, then God has promised to answer our prayers. That’s why we need a man of faith.”
And now that man walked onto the stage.
When he spoke so quietly that he almost whispered, the audience saw a wise and humble servant of God. When he spoke of the Lord’s plan for his candidacy, someone yelled “Amen!”
And when he described a nation that had entered a “dark” period, and Christians who had been “bullied,” and all the things that a nameless person everyone understood to be Obama would do to deliberately destroy the nation from within, Toni Ledet felt as if someone understood her deepest fears at last.
Now, sitting in her rocking chair on the front porch with Mike, she is sure she is not alone in her thinking. “You should have heard him,” she says to Mike.
She talks about what Carson said about the Syrian refugees whom Obama has urged Americans to accept.
“He was talking about how he is humble and loves to help people, but he doesn’t believe in bringing the enemy into your country,” she tells Mike.
“Yeah — what’s the word he used?” Mike says, trying to remember what he had read in the paper about how Carson had described his opposition to Syrian refugees. “A bug?”
“A rabid dog,” Toni says. “He said: Would you open your door and let him in?”
“I love dogs, but if you have a herd of dogs, and you got one rabid dog in there who looks like everybody else, it’s a bad situation,” Mike says.
They talk about what would happen if the refugees did come in.
“We are an immigrant country,” Mike says. “We assimilated from all different faiths and all different countries, but bringing immigrants to start their own little country inside of a state .?.?. doesn’t make sense.”
“And they want their laws,” Toni says. “They want their own little community and their own laws, and they want to live like they did in their country, establishing their little colonies for their faith.”
They discuss how the refugees relate to Obama’s plans.
“How ironic is the timing that Obama’s allowing these refugees to come in?” she says.
“Not allowing — forcing,” Mike says.
“Again, that’s where I go back to my belief that he’s bringing them in for a purpose,” she says. “He’s positioning this country, like playing chess. I think we will have another major tragedy like 9/11. He’s positioning certain people in this country to make that happen.”
She explains why she thinks this.
“In the last few years, he’s made comments about how he supports the Islamic faith,” she says. “I think he’s not 100 percent American.”
She pauses and then describes her darkest fear of all, of what will happen if things keep going in this direction, away from what she and Mike call “the biblical way.”
“A lot of people feel like the world is changing drastically for the worse, and I think Satan has his hand in it,” she says, and goes on to explain that she sees evil everywhere. In the legalizing of same-sex marriage. In babies being aborted. In the rise of the Islamic State and what seems to her an insistence by liberals on embracing Muslims and a parallel belittling of Christians for their faith.
“There’s a biblical verse — I wish I could remember it,” Mike says now. “It has to do with when a nation goes against the biblical way, God won’t listen to our prayers.”
Like Carson, they pray about every aspect of their lives, asking for guidance on everything from money to their eternal salvation in heaven.
“We’re going to lose our blessing,” Mike says.
And if that happens?
“Oh, God help us,” Toni says, looking out at the trees.
“It will basically destroy America,” Mike says.
“It’s like an ice cube melting,” Toni says. “You can see it going down, and you can’t stop that ice cube from melting. Unless we take a stand.
Hillary slams Republicans on guns, abortion after Planned Parenthood attack
Getty Images
By Bradford Richardson November 29, 2015, 09:36 pm
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton late Sunday launched a multi-pronged assault on Republicans following the shootings at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colo., calling for more stringent gun control and heightened protections for abortion rights.
“The shooting on Friday was at, as you know, a Planned Parenthood clinic, a place where lots of women get healthcare they need – breast exams, STD testing, contraception, and, yes, safe and legal abortions,” Clinton said at the New Hampshire Jefferson-Jackson Dinner. “We should be supporting Planned Parenthood, not attacking it.”
In an appeal for more stringent gun control, Clinton drew a connection between the Colorado shooting, which left three dead, and the terrorist attack on Paris earlier this month.
“This is truly unbelievable, that after what we’ve seen in Paris and other places, Republicans will not bring up a bill that will prohibit anyone on the no-fly list from buying a gun in America," she said. "If you are too dangerous to fly in America, you are too dangerous to buy a gun in America.
“How many more Americans need to die before we take action?” she asked.
The former first lady urged Republicans not to make abortion rights a partisan issue.
“And it is way past time to protect women’s health and respect women’s rights, not use them as political footballs,” she said.
Anticipating accusations of playing the “gender card,” Clinton told Republicans to deal her in.
“I know when I talk like this, some people, especially of the Republican persuasion, say I’m playing the gender card. Well, if talking about women’s health, equal pay, paid family leave, and affordable child care is playing the gender card, deal me in,” she said.
A number of people who knew Mr. Dear said he was a staunch abortion opponent, though another ex-wife, Pamela Ross, said that he did not obsess on the subject. After his arrest, Mr. Dear said “no more baby parts” to investigators, a law enforcement official said.
One person who spoke with him extensively about his religious views said Mr. Dear, who is 57, had praised people who attacked abortion providers, saying they were doing “God’s work.” In 2009, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concerns for the privacy of the family, Mr. Dear described as “heroes” members of the Army of God, a loosely organized group of anti-abortion extremists that has claimed responsibility for a number of killings and bombings.
Robert Lewis Dear aside, Planned Parenthood murders helpless preborn children. These murderous pigs at Planned Parenthood are babykillers and they reap what they sow. In this case, Planned Parenthood selling of aborted baby parts came back to bite them.
Anyone who supports abortion has the blood of babies on their hands.
MSNBC’s Irin Carmon spoke with Spitz [ http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/abortion-opponents-defense-colorado-planned-parenthood-shooting ], who told her that anti-choice groups that condemned the Colorado Springs shooting are “hypocritical” and “into political correctness way too far.” Spitz said that he was not against the shooter’s actions and will be “reaching out to him.”
“There are no innocent people in Planned Parenthood,” he said. “They’re in there for a reason.”
One notorious anti-abortion activist, who has long been an open supporter of violence against abortion providers, broke with the movement in offering direct support to Dear.
Donald Spitz, who runs the Army of God website and is based in Virginia, said of his fellow anti-abortion activists’ condemnations of violence, “They say that all the time. I think they’re hypocritical.”
While many groups insist violence against abortion providers is counterproductive to their cause, Spitz suggested such rhetoric is disingenuous. Referring to Scott Roeder, who murdered abortion provider George Tiller and who Spitz calls a friend, Spitz said, “How could that be counterproductive when he stopped them from providing abortions? They’ve lost their mind. They’re into political correctness way too far.”
As for Spitz’s own reaction, “I think Planned Parenthood is an evil organization, so I didn’t lose any sleep when I heard about it,” Spitz said. “They sell baby parts, and they reap what they sow, and now they’re complaining about it.”
He added, “There are no innocent people in Planned Parenthood. They’re in there for a reason.”
Spitz said he wrote to Dear on Monday to offer his support.
“I told him, I was reaching out to him, it appears that everybody is against him. I’m not against him,” he said.
Spitz was given pause, though, by the fact that the three killed on Friday weren’t involved in providing abortion. “It’s one thing to kill an abortionist who’s killing babies,” Spitz said. “What he did, I don’t know.”
For Robert Dear, Religion and Rage Before Planned Parenthood Attack
Robert L. Dear Jr., in a court appearance via video on Monday at the El Paso County Criminal Justice Center in Colorado Springs. Credit Pool photo by Daniel Owen
The musty and weathered trailer in Swannanoa, N.C., from which Mr. Dear ran a business called S Prints Mountain Art Prints. Credit Michael Biesecker/Associated Press
A cabin along a steep gravel road in Black Mountain, N.C., where Mr. Dear lived around 2005. Credit Michael Biesecker/Associated Press
Mr. Dear and Stephanie Bragg relocated to Hartsel, Colo., last year. Credit Julie Turkewitz/The New York Times
A police car with its back window shot out near the Planned Parenthood clinic the day after the shooting in Colorado Springs. Credit Isaiah J. Downing/Reuters
By RICHARD FAUSSET DEC. 1, 2015
CHARLESTON, S.C. — The man she had married professed to be deeply religious. But after more than seven years with Robert L. Dear Jr., Barbara Micheau had come to see life with him as a kind of hell on earth.
By January 1993, she had had enough. In a sworn affidavit as part of her divorce case, Ms. Micheau described Mr. Dear as a serial philanderer and a problem gambler, a man who kicked her, beat her head against the floor and fathered two children with other women while they were together. He found excuses for his transgressions, she said, in his idiosyncratic views on Christian eschatology and the nature of salvation.
“He claims to be a Christian and is extremely evangelistic, but does not follow the Bible in his actions,” Ms. Micheau said in the court document. “He says that as long as he believes he will be saved, he can do whatever he pleases. He is obsessed with the world coming to an end.”
On Friday, according to officials, Mr. Dear entered a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs [ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/28/us/colorado-planned-parenthood-shooting.html ], killing three people and wounding nine others with a semiautomatic rifle. The attack, which ended with his surrender to the police after a harrowing nationally televised standoff in the snow-dusted Western city, was a brutally violent and very public chapter in a life story whose details are not fully known.
But in court documents and interviews with people who knew Mr. Dear well, a picture emerges of an angry and occasionally violent man who seemed deeply disturbed and deeply contradictory: He was a man of religious conviction who sinned openly, a man who craved both extreme solitude and near-constant female company, a man who successfully wooed women but, some of them say, also abused them. He frequented marijuana websites, then argued with other posters, often through heated religious screeds.
“Turn to JESUS or burn in hell,” he wrote on one site on Oct. 7, 2005. “WAKE UP SINNERS U CANT SAVE YOURSELF U WILL DIE AN WORMS SHALL EAT YOUR FLESH, NOW YOUR SOUL IS GOING SOMEWHERE.”
A number of people who knew Mr. Dear said he was a staunch abortion opponent, though another ex-wife, Pamela Ross, said that he did not obsess on the subject. After his arrest, Mr. Dear said “no more baby parts” to investigators, a law enforcement official said.
One person who spoke with him extensively about his religious views said Mr. Dear, who is 57, had praised people who attacked abortion providers, saying they were doing “God’s work.” In 2009, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concerns for the privacy of the family, Mr. Dear described as “heroes” members of the Army of God, a loosely organized group of anti-abortion extremists that has claimed responsibility for a number of killings and bombings.
Investigators have only just begun to interview Mr. Dear’s relatives and acquaintances, and are still searching the Internet for his writings. Public information about his early years is limited.
Ms. Ross said Mr. Dear had a college degree. He spent a half-year enrolled at the University of Kentucky, and a year at the University of Louisville, according to officials at the two schools.
In December 1979 he married a woman in Louisville, Ky., listed in court records as Kimberly Ann Dear. They had a child, Matthew, in 1980. Three and a half years later, they separated. Mr. Dear moved to Charleston, S.C., which Ms. Ross said was his birthplace. He took a few fast-food management training jobs before landing a position at Santee Cooper, the South Carolina power company. Mollie Gore, a spokeswoman for the company, said he began work there in September 1984.
Mr. Dear also met the woman who would become his second wife, Barbara Ann Mescher, who now goes by her married name, Barbara Micheau. She met him at a shopping mall while she and a girlfriend were admiring a motorcycle on display. He got her number. They went out.
He told her he was divorced, but in the 1993 affidavit, which was also reported in The Post and Courier of Charleston [ http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20151130/PC16/151139933 ], she said she later learned he was still married. The divorce from his first wife was completed in September 1985, more than a year after he met Ms. Micheau.
Ms. Micheau declined to comment for this article. Mr. Dear’s lawyer in Colorado did not respond to messages Tuesday.
Mr. Dear married Ms. Micheau three months later, after the divorce came through. They settled in a condominium, and later in a suburban-style house. But soon after, she said, he began to stray. In November 1986, he fathered another child, Andrew, with his first wife, Ms. Micheau said. Then in 1990, Mr. Dear had a child, Taylor, with the woman who would later become his third wife, Ms. Ross. The same year, he and Ms. Micheau had a baby together, Walker.
Ms. Micheau suspected him of other affairs, but there were other problems as well.
In 1989, he left Santee Cooper, where, she said in the affidavit, he “got in trouble a lot and played hooky a lot.” Eventually, he struck out on his own as an “artist’s representative,” selling prints to wholesale art galleries, and driving from gallery to gallery in his truck.
But Mr. Dear, she said, racked up debt, and would not help her pay the bills or help clean the house. She said he took trips to Las Vegas and Atlantic City, often losing large sums of money. She said he spent his money on a new motorcycle and on an “expensive gun.” She accused him of dishonesty in his business dealings. And she said he kicked her and pulled her hair “on many occasions,” and noted other times when he hurt her physically.
Money was tight. A 1991 income tax return, filed jointly by the couple, showed their total income as $15,526. In May of that year, according to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, Mr. Dear was arrested and convicted in Charleston for the unlawful carrying of a “long blade knife” and the illegal possession of a loaded gun.
In court records, Mr. Dear admitted to engaging in “various acts of adultery,” and agreed with Ms. Micheau that “certain domestic difficulties developed” between them. In the court file, Mr. Dear did not address the more specific allegations Ms. Micheau made about his behavior.
In 1992, the couple separated. Records obtained from the North Charleston Police Department show that in November of that year, Mr. Dear was arrested as a suspect in a rape case. But the state Law Enforcement Division, which offers criminal records checks to the public, has no record of Mr. Dear being convicted of such a crime, meaning it is likely that the case was dismissed.
According to the police incident report, the woman told the police that a man named Robert approached her at her job at a Sears store in a mall and asked her out on a date. She refused. The man proceeded to call her two to three times a day, she said, “saying he wanted to see her,” according to the report.
On the afternoon of Nov. 29, 1992, the woman said, the man turned up at the front door of her apartment, put a knife to her throat, forced her inside and sexually assaulted her.
The woman’s husband, Craig Melchor, was on a Navy submarine when he got word that his young wife had been attacked at knifepoint and raped inside their apartment. The suspect, he learned: Robert L. Dear Jr.
“I won’t forget that name,” Mr. Melchor said in an interview.
Mr. Melchor said his wife wanted to see Mr. Dear face his day in court, but the only other witness, another Navy wife, refused to testify and the Melchors were about to move to Seattle.
Prosecutors called them and said: “You’re moving West. The witness you had doesn’t want to be involved,” Mr. Melchor recalled. “And that’s that. I remember. That wasn’t right.”
They went to counseling and rape survivors’ groups, but Mr. Melchor said his wife, who died in 2007, sometimes worried that her attacker would come back and find her. He said they both had to accept that the case was out of their hands.
“We had to let go and let God take care of it,” he said.
According to the police narrative, Mr. Dear acknowledged a sexual liaison with the woman, but said that it was “consensual.”
Ms. Micheau said she did not believe the accusation. In the affidavit, she said she believed her husband had “pursued a sexual relationship” with the “approval” of the woman.
“I tried to stick with him and help him through it, but it has become impossible,” said Ms. Micheau, adding: “He constantly criticizes everyone around him and he is very hard to please. He really does not have any friends. He does not trust anyone. He looks for a way around anything he has to do and spends a lot of time planning revenge.”
She described her husband as a man who “erupts into fury” in seconds. She said he had “emotional problems and needs counseling, which he vehemently opposed many times.”
The divorce was complete in June 1994.
By the summer of 1995, Mr. Dear had moved to Walterboro, about an hour west of Charleston, taking up residence in a double-wide trailer on a secluded one-lane road, Winding Creek Drive, that cut through the woods. Ms. Micheau complained in court documents that Mr. Dear would not tell her exactly where he lived, which concerned her because he had visitation rights with their son, Walker.
Eventually, Mr. Dear married his third wife, who today goes by Pamela Ross. They lived in the double-wide trailer, raising Taylor, their son, and Ms. Ross’s child from a previous marriage. Walker spent time there as well.
Ms. Ross struck a different tone in describing Mr. Dear. She said he had often taken her and the boys out shopping or visiting Lowcountry attractions in Hilton Head and Charleston. She said he believed strongly in the Bible, but did not seem overly zealous. He was against abortion, she said, but not obsessively so: “It was never really a topic of discussion,” she said.
A police incident report shows that in 1997, she told the police that he had locked her out of her home and that he had “hit her and pushed her out the window” when she tried to climb in. He also shoved her to the ground, she said. The report said she did not want to file charges.
In the interview, Ms. Ross said Mr. Dear would quickly apologize after doing something wrong. Still, the relationship fizzled, for reasons she did not discuss. According to court records, the couple’s divorce went through in November 2001.
In 2005, John Hood moved to Winding Creek Drive from the Catskills region of New York and became Mr. Dear’s newest neighbor. Mr. Hood described Mr. Dear as eccentric: He liked to sit on a deck in his underwear and drink his coffee. He sometimes drove an old unlicensed Volkswagen Beetle up and down the rutted road. Mr. Hood said that the neighbors on the other side of Mr. Dear had erected a wooden fence because they sometimes saw Mr. Dear skinny-dipping in a pool.
“I didn’t make a point to get to know him,” Mr. Hood, 68, said in an interview.
The two men did interact when Mr. Hood put his pickup up for sale. Mr. Dear paid cash for it. At one point, when Mr. Dear was visiting his neighbor’s property, he suggested that Mr. Hood put a metal roof on his house “because the government satellites can see through your roof.”
Eventually, Mr. Dear moved to North Carolina, keeping two homes near Asheville in a stretch of the Blue Ridge Mountains. One was a musty and weathered trailer in Swannanoa, from which he ran a business called S Prints Mountain Art Prints. The other was a yellow cabin along a steep gravel road.
At the cabin, in Black Mountain, he rarely spoke with his neighbors. When he did, it was usually because of a dispute over how he cared for animals or how fast he drove an all-terrain vehicle along the single-lane road where children play freely and dogs roam and yelp.
In the small community, his scowl stood out.
“I know everyone on the road better than I ever knew him,” said Kara McNerney, who has lived on the street for more than 16 years.
Online, Mr. Dear appeared to lead a different sort of life. Though to his neighbors he was a recluse, he posted frequently to a web forum dedicated to cannabis and joined an adult dating site called SexyAds in the fall of 2005 and the winter of 2006.
On SexyAds, a poster using his email address and photo said he was looking for a discreet relationship and was interested in spanking. On the cannabis forum, he said he was looking for women to “party,” and rarely wrote about using the drug.
Instead, he was far more likely to write brief and emphatic messages about Jesus Christ – usually in caps lock, the online equivalent of yelling – or to post sparsely worded solicitations for female companionship in North and South Carolina. “savannah sexy women wanted. i love to party, tall, aries, male,” he wrote in August 2005.
He argued with users of the site who disagreed with his religious posts, deriding them as “slaves” and “demons” who would suffer at the end of the world. On Oct. 7, 2005, he wrote, “Every knee shall bow an every tongue will confess that JESUS IS LORD.”
Around seven years ago, Mr. Dear began dating a woman named Stephanie Bragg. For reasons that remain unclear, they moved last year to Hartsel, Colo., a hamlet perched about 65 miles west of Colorado Springs. Ringed by mountains, Hartsel calls itself the Heart of Colorado.
The move was not welcomed by some in Ms. Bragg’s family. Her former stepmother, Patricia Stutts, said Ms. Bragg’s father had expressed concern about his daughter, who is 13 years younger than Mr. Dear, moving out West with him.
“He told me Stephanie had gone to Colorado, and was living off the grid and had to go into town to make phone calls,” Ms. Stutts said. “He was very disturbed by it.”
A close relative of Ms. Bragg’s, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of concerns about privacy for Ms. Bragg’s family, said that Mr. Dear “always kept to himself, was a tad strange” but that he seemed to treat Ms. Bragg well. He paid for their trips to visit family in the Carolinas and would “buy the presents and such.”
The relative said Mr. Dear and Ms. Bragg were “very religious, read the Bible often and are always talking about scripture.” He had not shown signs of being violent, the relative said.
The relative, who spoke with Ms. Bragg in recent days, also said that before the shooting, Mr. Dear reportedly “wasn’t sleeping at all,” and had “been talking about the Devil getting in his head and such.”
The relative said Ms. Bragg had been hospitalized since a week before Thanksgiving, with an infection and pancreatitis. Mr. Dear visited her every day until the day of the shooting.
“She says she can’t believe he was capable of such things, and I think that’s what’s upsetting her most,” the relative said about Ms. Bragg. “He believed he was doing God’s will, and I’m sure he probably wanted to die in the process of carrying out what I’m sure he thought was right.”
Reporting was contributed by Jack Healy, Julie Turkewitz, Dave Philipps and Kassondra Cloos from Colorado Springs; Alan Blinder from Swannanoa, N.C.; and Ashley Southall, Mike McIntire and Liam Stack from New York. Jack Begg provided research from New York.
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