US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2529

On November 17 2015 21:35 oneofthem wrote:
leave it for europeans to clean up their colonial mess.

On November 17 2015 22:26 corumjhaelen wrote:
You got what you asked for...

On November 17 2015 22:14 oneofthem wrote:
a bit of schadenfreude after a few years of the ME being an exclusively american problem. but really, the present situation calls for the more direct stakeholders in europe to get more active in security.

On November 17 2015 23:45 Simberto wrote:
Wait, are there actually people in the US who are smug about the fact that you turned the ME into a complete shithole, even moreso than it already was beforehands (which is quite hard to do), and now it is someone elses problem?

A large amount of the current problems in the ME are directly based on the fact that you elected a braindead moron as a president, who then proceeded to start utterly idiotic wars over there. Why couldn't you notice that you are half a world away from the middle east and could just NOT do things there instead of spending billions on worsening the situation for everyone involved 15 years ago?

This basically sounds like me shitting on your doorstep and then laughing at you for having to clean up shit on your doorstep.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said it was not up to courts to grant LGBT legal protections and in the process, compared gay people to pedophiles.

Speaking at Georgetown University Law School Monday, Scalia said the Constitution guaranteed only religious and political protections, The New York Times reported, and that it was not up to judges to determine which other minority groups deserved legal protections.

“What minorities deserve protection?” he said rhetorically. “What? It’s up to me to identify deserving minorities?”

“What about pederasts?” he asked. “What about child abusers?”

“This is a deserving minority,” he went on, jokingly. “Nobody loves them.”

He argued that it instead should be up to the democratic process to determine which minority groups deserve legal protections.

Ben Carson’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 with The New York Times 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,” Duane R. Clarridge, a top adviser to Mr. Carson on terrorism and national security, said in an interview. He also said Mr. Carson needed weekly conference calls briefing him on foreign policy so “we can make him smart.”

Republican state Rep. Tony Dale is concerned that Texas' lax gun laws could allow Syrian refugees to launch terror attacks on American soil.

In a two-page letter sent to U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) on Monday, Dale asked state officials to reject the resettlement of more Syrian refugees within the Lone Star State’s borders after Friday's terror attacks in Paris. He argued that immigration documents granted to refugees would allow them to obtain Texas drivers' licenses, which in turn would allow them to procure firearms.

“While the Paris attackers used suicide vests and grenades it is clear that firearms also killed a large number of innocent victims," Dale wrote. "Can you imagine a scenario were [sic] a refugees [sic] is admitted to the United States, is provided federal cash payments and other assistance, obtains a drivers license and purchases a weapon and executes an attack?”

There is no waiting period to purchase a gun in Texas, which has some of the least restrictive gun laws in the country. Starting in January, Texans will be able to openly carry handguns as well.

Dale also wrote that he was concerned recently arrived refugees could get jobs working at Texas airports and plant explosives on planes. He pointed to the recent bombing of a Russian charter jet over Egypt that has been attributed to the Islamic State terror group.

Senate Republicans are considering significant changes to their proposal to repeal Obamacare and defund Planned Parenthood and will temporarily delay consideration of the measure to ensure it can pass the Senate.

GOP leaders are even mulling removing the Planned Parenthood provision if it gets them closer to putting Obamacare repeal on the president’s desk. They need just a majority of votes to pass the legislation, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his team are being squeezed between moderates balking at the Planned Parenthood language and a trio of conservatives that say the Obamacare repeal language doesn’t go far enough.

“We’re looking at all options. It’s about 51,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) after a closed-door leadership meeting on Monday night. “[When] we get a clear idea from the parliamentarian what’s a go, and what’s a no go, we’ll start rounding up the vote.”

The 54-member Republican majority got its first ruling from the parliamentarian last week, which found that the Planned Parenthood language withstood scrutiny but repeal of the individual and business mandates as passed by the House would need to be rewritten. The parliamentarian's ruling is being kept closely by both parties, though Democrats say the GOP’s hopes of easy passage of Obamacare have been doomed.

Republicans say that's not the case and are confident they will eventually prevail, but they admit work remains. They’d originally been aiming to pass reconciliation this month, but they now plan to use next week’s Thanksgiving recess to get the measure ready to pass the Senate and accrue 51 votes.

What has not been decided is whether the proposal will turn into a straight-out attack on Obamacare and lose language stripping Planned Parenthood of funding. Senators said they could try a different legislative vehicle to force that fight should they back down on reconciliation to keep moderates on board.

“The primary purpose of this bill is Obamacare repeal,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 3 Senate Republican. “We need to make sure we get 51 votes to get Obamacare repealed. So if [Planned Parenthood] gets in the way of that at this point we’ll have to take a look at it.”

GOP senators Mike Lee of Utah, Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas all oppose the reconciliation measure as currently written, leaving McConnell little room for error once the proposal passes muster with the parliamentarian. And even getting there is going to take major work.

The US government has failed to properly protect the red wolf, one of the world’s rarest wolves, by allowing a member of the species’ small wild population to be killed, conservationists have claimed.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service has been taken to court by a coalition of environmental groups that argues it has not properly protected the endangered red wolf, with estimates of just 50 to 75 of the animals left in the wild in North Carolina.

A lawsuit filed with the US district court for the eastern district of North Carolina states that the FWS permitted a landowner to kill an adult female red wolf in June that was known to have mothered a total of 16 pups through four litters.

This killing, along with a previous shooting of a red wolf last year, represents a “direct violation” of regulations around the capture of wolves on private property, the lawsuit claims.

The environment groups – the Red Wolf Coalition, Defenders of Wildlife and the Animal Welfare Institute – also allege that the FWS has failed to properly review the status of red wolves and has unduly suspended the reintroduction of the species from captivity into the wild.

The red wolf, which is smaller than a grey wolf, weighing around 40 to 50lb, once roamed an area stretching from Missouri to Texas and into North Carolina. The species, a top predator in the region, was largely wiped out over the past 100 years due to shooting and habitat loss.

The species was effectively extinct in the wild in 1980 when the FWS took the remaining red wolves into captivity for breeding. From an initial population of 14, there are now around 200 in captivity. Given this captive population, the FWS does not consider the species to be in imminent danger of becoming extinct if a wild wolf is shot.