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Ronnie Hyde #fundie rawstory.com

A Florida youth pastor charged with the cold-case murder of one teen and the sexual abuse of others wants his guns back while he awaits trial.

Ronnie Hyde pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and child pornography charges in March related to the 1994 slaying of 16-year-old Fred Laster, whose dismembered body was found in a Dumpster.

Laster’s decapitated torso was found behind a trash bin near Lake City, but the remains went unidentified until a DNA test in 2015 matched the slain teen to his twin sister.

Police said the 61-year-old Hyde befriended the runaway teen more than two decades ago as youth pastor at Strength for Living Church in Yulee, prosecutors said.

Investigators strongly suggested they suspect Hyde — who had been a counselor at Crosswater Community Church in Nocatee up to his arrest — is a suspect in other unsolved cases by plastering his face on eight billboards seeking information in the Jacksonville area.

New court documents show that prosecutors are also gathering evidence in two additional sex abuse cases dating back to the early 1990s.

A man came forward after Hyde’s arrest in March and said the former youth pastor had mentored him as a runaway in 1992, brought him to his house, used the guns to impress him, showed him pornography and sexually abused him.

Hyde’s attorneys are seeking the return of some of the evidence — including a Toyota Scion, firearms, guitar equipment, a cell phone and a wallet — gathered from the former church leader’s home, which was demolished in May as a biohazard.

FBI agents who raided the home found multiple code violations, such as no running water and a bathtub used as a toilet.

Prosecutors said they’re willing to return Hyde’s car, wallet and music equipment, but not the smart phones or guns.

The city held no condemnation proceedings on the home, and a demolition permit was issued at the request of a Hyde family attorney as part of a property sale to a new owner.

Defense attorneys want Hyde, who had previously been named in an international child exploitation case, to be tried separately on the murder and child pornography charges.

Hyde, who is due back in court next month, remains jailed without bond.

Word of Faith Fellowship #fundie rawstory.com

A North Carolina church that is already under investigation for kidnapping a gay man and attempting to beat his homosexuality out of him is once again in the spotlight after it was revealed that church members have been importing worshipers from Brazil and turning them into slaves.

According to the Associated Press, the Word of Faith Fellowship recruits young members from two affiliated churches in Brazil to come to the U.S. on tourist and student visas where they are put to work on the church’s 35-acre compound in Spindale for no pay.

One man, identified as Andre Oliveira, told the AP that he was forced to work 15 hours a day, usually for no pay, cleaning offices and warehouses owned by the evangelical church. He well also forced to work at private businesses owned by some of the church’s ministers. Olivera stated that failure to comply resulted in beatings and shaming from the pulpit.

“They kept us as slaves,” Oliveira explained. “We were expendable. We meant nothing to them. Nothing. How can you do that to people — claim you love them and then beat them in the name of God?”

According to AP, “Under U.S. law, visitors on tourist visas are prohibited from performing work for which people normally would be compensated. Those on student visas are allowed some work, under circumstances that were not met at Word of Faith Fellowship.”

Former congregants who came from Brazil said that they had their passports taken away and lived in “horrific” living conditions, with as many as eight people living in the basement of a church leader’s home. What little money they were paid was immediately returned to the church to pay for their living expenses.

“Brazilians came here for labor. I’m telling you, that’s it,” claimed Thiago Silva who was recruited at age 18. He called the treatment “a violation of human rights.”

The church is currently being investigated by the U.S. Attorney in Charlotte for crimes that may go back years and involve hundreds of young Brazilians.

Gordon College #sexist rawstory.com

Despite showing his true colors early on, a private college in Massachusetts failed to discipline a student accused of rape by multiple people until years after the fact.

According to a ThinkProgress report, former Gordon College student Mischael Celestin raped, assaulted or attempted to assault multiple students over a period of years before school administrators did anything about it. This, despite Celestin having been expelled from Eastern Nazarene College for sexual assault prior to coming to Gordon in 2012. That fall, the first reported sexual assault allegation against him was recorded.

Though campus rape (and poor administrative response to it) is an epidemic that spans the religious-secular school divide, an author who spoke to ThinkProgress for their report on Gordon said its’ handling is particularly egregious at Christian schools.

“Because Christians tend to frame rape as a loss of purity rather than a loss of individual agency, they struggle with handling sexual assault cases appropriately,” Dianna Anderson, author of Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity, told ThinkProgress.

Although Gordon’s student handbook forbids “drunkenness” and “sexual relations outside marriage,” it claims to provide “amnesty” for both in cases of sexual assault. That “amnesty,” however, does not provide any guidelines on how the school handles rape.

Despite being accused repeatedly throughout his time at Gordon, it took a warning from a teacher at Eastern Nazarene and an arrest over trying to have sex with a 15-year-old girl. He was finally expelled in 2015 after his arrest.

Unnamed vendor #racist rawstory.com

Walmart apologized after a vendor described a product using a racial slur on the retailer’s website.

The unidentified vendor listed a netting weave cap for sale on Walmart’s website and described the item as “n****r brown,” reported the New York Post.

The racial slur was brought to Walmart’s attention on Twitter, where social media users asked the retailer for an explanation.

The same item, which is used to anchor hair extensions, is available for sale on Amazon, but doesn’t include a racial slur in the description.

Walmart promptly replaced the “add to cart” button with a message stating the item was no longer available.

The retailer explained that manufacturers and suppliers provide product descriptions, and that listing had not yet been verified by Walmart.

“We are very sorry and appalled that this third party seller listed their item with this description on our online marketplace,” spokeswoman Danit Marquardt wrote in a statement. “It is a clear violation of our policy, and has been removed, and we are investigating the seller to determine how this could have happened.”

Spanish Fort High School #fundie rawstory.com

An ultra-conservative reading list required by one Alabama school is raising eyebrows and raising concerns among parents.

The right-wing frequently accuses the schools of kowtowing to leftists politics by teaching things like science instead of religion and demanding youth refrain from reading classic literature that depicts a racist American history. But according to AL.com, it’s the far right that is demanding schools teach their philosophies.

The Baldwin School Board is getting involved after a summer reading list was given to students at Spanish Fort High School by teacher Gene Ponder. The list mandates that students choose one of the books from the list, which range from Rand Paul books to Ann Coulter. It also has Michael Savage’s 2006 book, Liberalism is a Mental Disorder listed as an option.

While political or controversial books aren’t unheard of, particularly in upper-level Advanced Placement classes, they’re typically taught alongside the contrasting view point. For example, The Bible is often taught with Edith Hamilton’s Mythology. That was not the case here.

Elizabeth Denham, whose son was in the AP class, posted the reading list on her Facebook page and blog saying that she contacted the school out of concern.

“I encourage my children to read things they disagree with,” she explained. “To listen to those with opposing perspectives. To be open to ideas other than theirs, but to stand up for their beliefs respectfully. This list did not encourage that philosophy. It presented one side. And one side filled with pop culture personalities who spew hate and rhetoric – not intellectual, respected authors who offer well-educated ideas from different points of view.”

While the board has received complaints, Baldwin County school board member David Cox doubted board members will care much.

“Generally speaking, I would think that needs to be left up to the individual school with the direction of the superintendent,” Cox told AL.com. Though he admitted he hasn’t reviewed the complaint.

“That’s something we leave to the superintendent and his staff and employees,” he continued. “Those need to stay at the school level or the superintendent, without board action. Until the superintendent says otherwise, it’s my opinion that it needs to be left up to him.”

The school board president — who actually lives in the town refused to comment.

Superintendent Eddie Tyler told the media this week that he did have a copy of the complaint and would review it.

You can see a copy of the complaint sent by parent Julia Coccaro below, which is concerned with more issues than just the book list. It includes the censorship of a yearbook section that removed the coming-out story of an LGBT teen and an incident in which a driver’s education teacher who spent an entire class period discussing his personal religious beliefs.

“It is also concerning that the superintendent was unable to bring himself to condemn books with titles like ‘Liberalism is a Mental Disorder’ when there are both liberals and students with mental illness attending classes within the Baldwin County School District,” the complaint explains. “The parents and students of Baldwin County expect more from our superintendent.”

Vicky Hartzler #fundie rawstory.com

A Republican lawmaker this week singled out transgender soldiers as a “threat” to the United States during an interview with Tony Perkins of the Family Research Center, a Christian organization that has for years fought against expanding rights for LGBT citizens.

As ThinkProgress documents, Perkins conducted an interview with Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) this week in which she said the prospect of transgender soldiers constituted a “domestic threat” to U.S. security.

“At a time when we should be focusing on the threats from North Korea, and Putin, and ISIS, we’re having to deal with a threat here at home?—?a domestic threat?—?of allowing transgenders in our service, which is a real problem because it impacts their readiness, and it’s a huge cost for our military,” she told Perkins.

Among other things, Hartzler said she feared surgeries for transgender troops would cost the military too much money, despite the fact that estimates by the RAND Corporation project that gender-transition-related health costs for the military would only go up by between $2.4 million and $8.4 million annually if it allowed transgender people to serve openly.

Before ending her interview, Hartzler reiterated that her goal regarding transgender soldiers would be to “remove this threat from the national defense.”

Raw Story reached out to Hartzler’s office to elaborate on her view that transgender soldiers are a “threat” to the United States, but they did not return calls requesting comment.

Nate #fundie rawstory.com

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was repeatedly labeled as a ‘c*ck’ by an intern for Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark).

Mediate’s Caleb Ecarma posted an audio recording of an intern only identified as “Nate” spouting shocking views about immigration and the Republican Speaker.

“Paul Ryan is a c*ck, he’s a c*ck, get him out,” the intern said. “Paul Ryan: c*ck first and Yankee second.”

“The term ‘c*ck’ originated in political spaces during 2015, as white nationalists and the far-right began calling Republicans they deemed too moderate ‘c*ckservatives,’” Mediate explained.

“Am I a bigot? I guess damn so!” Nate confessed.

The office of Senator Tom Cotton either failed at vetting the staffer or condones his bigotry as the intern, “repeatedly said ‘f*g’ and ‘f*ggot’ and used ‘gay’ as a derogatory term on his public Twitter page before being hired. These Twitter rants also include the use of the slur ‘tranny.’”

“Americans are the superior race to everyone in the world — we’re superior people,” the intern claimed, while referring to the British “f*ggots.”

“Ryan has been deemed a ‘c*ck’ from white nationalist leader Richard Spencer, neo-Nazi websites The Daily Stormer and Stormfront and alt-right pundit Mike Cernovich,” Mediate listed. “Ryan even received the title “C*ck of The Year For 2016” by the Reddit page President Trump used to host an online town hall event.”

Dan Sullivan #fundie rawstory.com

An Arkansas lawmaker who owns a day care where a child died in a hot van previously fought a proposal that might have saved the boy’s life.

State Rep. Dan Sullivan (R-Jonesboro) is the chief executive officer of Ascent, a child care organization where 5-year-old Christopher Gardner died last week after spending eight hours strapped in a booster seat as the heat index soared over 100 degrees, reported KATV-TV.

Four employees of the West Memphis facility have been charged with manslaughter in the boy’s death.

“Staff did not follow company policies and procedures, and if they had, this tragedy would not have occurred,” Sullivan said in a statement.

He later offered to pay the boy’s funeral expenses, but the family declined.

“It didn’t take them but two minutes or one minute to go back and get off they lazy ass and go see where the kids at — they didn’t check for my grandbaby?” said the boy’s grandmother, Carrie Smith.

Sullivan asked the Arkansas Early Childhood Commission last year to reduce a requirement that at least half of child care employees at any facility be certified in CPR and first aid.

Four of the commissioners told KATV that Sullivan questioned whether the oversight body should exist after they refused to cut the requirement, and he sponsored a bill stripping the commission of its authority to regulate child care centers.

That measure became law, the only bill sponsored by Sullivan to pass during that legislative session.

Sullivan drew national attention in 2001, when he suspended an 8-year-old boy from school for three days for pointing a chicken finger at a teacher and saying, “Pow, pow, pow.”

The former principal justified the suspension under a zero-tolerance policy enacted at South School after two teens killed four classmates and a teacher and wounding 10 other students in 1998 at Jonesboro’s Westside Middle School.

The same Ascent facility where the boy died last week experienced a shigella outbreak in April, sickening nearly 40 children and employees, and the facility was temporarily closed Wednesday to stop the continued spread of the bacterial infection, reported Arkansas Times.

The Department of Human Services has also launched an investigation into Ascent for possible Medicaid fraud after the boy’s death.

A spokeswoman for DHS told the Arkansas Times that the boy had been inaccurately marked as present in class, which would have made the day care center eligible for reimbursement, raising concerns about the facility’s Medicaid procedures.

Donna Kikkert #fundie rawstory.com

A conservative student filed a lawsuit to turn her failing grade into an “A” because she did not like her professor’s assigned readings.

Donna Kikkert complained that her professor assigned texts that focused on LGBT poets instead of classics such as Robert Frost and Edgar Allan Poe, and she was unable to persuade University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point faculty to let her read what she wanted, reported the (Milwaukee) Journal Sentinel.

The 59-year-old Kikkert claims that Patricia Dyjak, her professor for Advanced Creative Writing Poetry, failed her in retaliation for complaining about course work involving “lesbians, illicit sexual relationships, incest and frequent swearing.”

She also accused the professor of exposing her bare breast while showing students a tattoo on her shoulder blade area.

“She has swung the pendulum far to the side of LGBT students and, in doing so, has chosen to totally discount the importance and the validity of the mainstream student population,” Kikkert argued in her suit.

Kikkert wants a court to force Dyjak to turn the F into an A, and she also wants the professor suspended for a year without pay or fired.

The professor is being represented by the state Attorney General’s Office because the university is a function of the state.

Dyjak declined to comment, but Assistant Attorney General Katherine Spitz has requested the case be dismissed because Kikkert’s allegations don’t amount to a violation of any law.

“Kikkert’s complaint fails because it does not provide any legal authority or other basis (and the defendant’s counsel is aware of none) upon which this court could require Dyjak to teach the work of certain poets in a college course — or to provide any particular student with the grade that student believes she deserves, rather than the one she earned,” Spitz argued in a court filing.

A Portage County judge dismissed the case, but Kikkert has said she may appeal.

Unidentified Racist #racist rawstory.com

A white woman in Toronto Canada verbally attacked Asian grocery store employees Friday in a video captured and posted on Facebook, the Huffington Post reports.

“Go back to China. This is Canada, English-first country,” the woman shouted, according to the video. “If you’re gonna work here, it is the law to know English.”

“It is a law to know English, and you know that,” she continued. As in the United States, there is no law that requires Canadian residents know English.

“It is the law in Canada that if you’re going to work here you need to know the English language,” she repeated.

Frank Hong, the teenager who filmed the video, told the Daily Mail onlookers were horrified by the woman’s outburst.

“After three minutes of constant, racist verbal abuse and after trying to intervene, I started to film this video,” Hong wrote in a Facebook post. “Racism and xenophobia isn’t far from us nor has it gone away. As Canadians we think we are safe from these disgusting attitudes and behaviours but we aren’t. It has only gotten worse recently. It seems like some people want to reinstate the Chinese Exclusion Act.”

“No employee who works so hard for so little money deserves this and no human being in the world deserves this,” Hong told the Daily Mail.

Clay Higgins #racist rawstory.com

A Louisiana Republican called for a religious war against Islamic terrorists in the wake of attacks over the weekend in London.

Freshman Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) called for violent action against suspected terrorists in a Facebook post, alongside a photo of police taking a suspect into custody after an attack Saturday at London Bridge killed seven people and injured nearly 50 others.

“The free world— all of Christendom— is at war with Islamic horror,” Higgins wrote.

“Not one penny of American treasure should be granted to any nation who harbors these heathen animals,” the lawmaker continued. “Not a single radicalized Islamic suspect should be granted any measure of quarter. Their intended entry to the American homeland should be summarily denied.”

“Every conceivable measure should be engaged to hunt them down,” he added. “Hunt them, identity them, and kill them. Kill them all. For the sake of all that is good and righteous. Kill them all.”

Higgins is a former police captain in Louisiana before his election to Congress in November.

"David" #sexist rawstory.com

A Canadian airline pilot said that she was shocked after receiving a recent note that cited the Bible as a reason flying airplanes were “no place for a woman.”

WestJet pilot Carey Steacy told CTV that crews were cleaning the aircraft after a flight from Calgary to Victoria on Sunday, and they found the note from a passenger named “David” written on a napkin.

“The cockpit of an airliner is no place for a woman,” the note said. “A woman being a mother is the most honour, not as ‘captain.’”

“PS I wish Westjet [sic] could tell me a fair lady is at the helm so I can book another flight,” he continued, observing that his views were “not PC.”

“It made me feel sad. It was just surprising,” Steacy recalled. “I can’t believe that there’s people that still think that way.”

In a post on Facebook, Steacy wrote that the passenger had been “welcome to deplane when you heard I was a ‘fair lady.’ You have that right. Funny, we all, us humans, have the same rights in this great free country of ours. ”

The WestJet passenger’s note also pointed to a Bible verse, Proverbs 31, which many Christians believe defines the “perfect” woman as a wife who works in the home.

Matt Rinaldi #racist rawstory.com

A fight broke out among lawmakers at the Texas State Capitol on Monday after a Republican representative responded to people protesting recently passed immigration legislation by calling Immigration and Customs Enforcement to come round them up.

Several local reporters on the scene in Austin bring word that shoving broke out among lawmakers on Monday afternoon after Texas Republican Rep. Matt Rinaldi told a group of Latino lawmakers that he called ICE on the protesters, who were on hand to protest the passage of SB4, an anti-sanctuary cities bill that will go into effect in September.

Misaimed Fandom Award

And we thought they were stupid when they forgot about Lando...

Various Idiots #racist rawstory.com

The new series Star Trek Discovery stars Asian actress Michelle Yeoh as the ship’s captain and black actress Sonequa Martin-Green as her first officer — and this has caused some Trekkies to fret about the lack of white men in charge.

While the overall reaction to the new Star Trek trailer has been positive — although there are the usual complaints from Star Trek fans about continuity errors — one group of fans is particularly upset about the show’s diverse cast of characters.

As both Heat Street and Daily Kos point out, the series’ YouTube page has been bombarded by comments labeling the show a “SJW” plot aimed at shoving “political correctness,” “forced diversity,” and even “cultural Marxism” down viewers’ throats.

Additionally, some angry Twitter users have even proclaimed that the show’s diverse cast is evidence of a “white genocide” conspiracy aimed at eliminating the white race from the face of the Earth.

(followed by a series of tweets from total idiots, I'm sorry I don't know how to add tweets)

Devon Arthurs #fundie rawstory.com

A white supremacist is being accused of fatally shooting his two neo-Nazi roommates after they objected to his decision to convert to Islam.

The Tampa Bay Times reports that 18-year-old Devon Arthurs is being accused by police of gunning down two of his roommates — 22-year-old Jeremy Himmelman and 18-year-old Andrew Oneschuk — after they attacked his newfound Muslim faith.

According to police, Arthurs was upset at Islamophobia and decided to murder his two roommates “to bring attention to his cause.” Prior to converting to Islam, Arthurs was a committed white supremacist, as were his two slain roommates.

Police say that, after killing his two roommates, Arthurs went into a nearby smoke shop in Tampa Palms, where he took three hostages and threatened to kill them. After police arrived on the scene, they convinced him to release the hostages and turn himself in.

“I had to do it,” he said, according to police. “This wouldn’t have had to happen if your country didn’t bomb my country.”

Police say that Arthurs also told them that his goal was not only to draw attention to American foreign policy in the Muslim world, but also to “take some of the neo-Nazis with him” as part of his murderous rampage.

The Tampa Bay Times writes that Arthurs faces “two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of aggravated assault and three counts of armed kidnapping.”

Christopher Sean Urbanski #racist rawstory.com

A black ROTC cadet set to graduate from Bowie State University this week was stabbed to death by a white University of Maryland student who’s a member of a racist online hate group, the Baltimore Sun reports.

Richard Collins III, 23, was visiting UMD this graduation weekend when he was attacked by Christoper Sean Urbanski, 22. Collins and two friends were awaiting an Uber ride around 3 a.m. Saturday morning when an “intoxicated and incoherent” Urbanski stabbed him. Authorities who reviewed videotape of the incident described the attack as unprovoked.

Police charged Urbanski, a member of the Facebook group, “Alt-Reich Nation,” with first-degree murder Sunday. The FBI is investigating the stabbing as a possible hate crime.

Karl Oliver #fundie rawstory.com

“The destruction of these monuments, erected in the loving memory of our family and fellow Southern Americans, is both heinous and horrific,” Oliver wrote. “If the, and I use this term extremely loosely, ‘leadership’ of Louisiana wishes to, in a Nazi-ish fashion, burn books or destroy historical monuments of OUR HISTORY, they should be LYNCHED! Let it be known, I will do all in my power to prevent this from happening in our State.”

North Carolina GOP #fundie rawstory.com

During a vote at 3 a.m. on Friday morning, angry Republicans in the North Carolina state Senate cut education funding from the districts of Democratic senators.

The News and Observer reported that Republicans had become frustrated after Democrats forced vote after vote on budget amendments during a session that began on Thursday and went into the early hours of Friday morning.

Republicans eventually called for a two hour recess after negotiations between Senate Minority Leader Dan Blue and Senate Majority Leader Phil Berger appeared to break down.

When the session resumed around 3 a.m., Republican Sen. Brent Jackson introduced an amendment that provided an extra $1 million to fight the opioid epidemic. The amendment was passed before Democrats noticed that the $1 million had been taken from education funding in their districts.

Democratic Sen. Erica Smith-Ingram’s district lost $316,646 that was earmarked for two rural high schools. The amendment also banned the school from using existing funds for the Eastern North Carolina STEM program, which promotes science, math and technology.

“I don’t know what motivated the amendment, but it will have a devastating effect on an area that is already suffering,” Smith-Ingram told The News and Observer on Saturday.

She said that the program would be shut down unless Republicans agreed to fund it before the budget was finalized.

“The future of children should not be caught up in a political disagreement between members,” Smith-Ingram insisted.

Sinclair Broadcasting Group #fundie rawstory.com

According to the New York Times, Sinclair Broadcasting Group — a conservative news network run by GOP donor Daniel Smith — is requiring affiliate stations to run right- wing programming that includes debunked stories favorable to President Donald Trump.

With Sinclair’s potential acquisition of Tribute Media Group, concerns that they might exert their allegedly pro-Trump bias over a majority of American news stations is growing.

The article claims that Sinclair requires news stations they own to broadcast “must-runs” — news packages created by the network such as one issued by the company’s vice president of news Scott Livingston that decried biased media and positioned themselves as bastions of journalistic objectivity. Stations are reportedly required to broadcast these must-runs within 48 hours of receiving them from the network.

Sinclair currently owns 173 stations in many large media markets, and with their purchase of Tribune, they would own 42 more and could then control up to 70 percent of all American broadcast media.

In 2013, the Seattle Times ran an article critical of Sinclair’s conservative bias, as evidenced by their treatment of Democratic candidates such as John Kerry, the subject of a critical documentary aired just before the 2004 election. According to KOMO employees, Sinclair reportedly ran a story “critical of the newspaper industry” and of the Seattle Times specifically in response.

Along with the must-runs, reporters at Seattle’s KOMO news station told the Times that they were once subject to a strange request from their editor — to investigate a (now debunked) advertisement for “paid protesters”. They soon learned that the request came down from Sinclair’s corporate HQ.

Despite Livingston’s assertion that Sinclair works “very hard to be objective and fair and be in the middle,” reporters at KOMO told the Times a different story. They complained — under condition of anonymity — that the must-runs are “too politically tilted” and “occasionally of poor quality,” and a union representative for photojournalists at KOMO said their union members have expressed dissatisfaction as well.

“It’s something that’s very troubling to our members,” Dave Twedell, the KOMO union rep, told the Times. “I have not found one of our members who is supportive of our company’s position.”

Oklahoma GOP #fundie rawstory.com

Oklahoma lawmakers have passed legislation that would require officials to consider abortion to be murder.

The Tulsa World reported a law was passed Monday afternoon that would force any state official to defy the U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized privacy for the procedure. It was also done without any discussion or debate on the House floor.

The bill’s author, Republican state Rep. Chuck Strohm, spoke after the bill’s passage claiming the high court violated “every act of decency and law” when it decided Roe v. Wade. He declared the founding documents of the United States were abused by “forcing the murder of unborn children on our society.”

He went on to tell his fellow officials that they took an oath to uphold the Constitution and “to exercise their authority as appropriate in their respective jurisdictions to stop the murder of innocent unborn children by abortion.”

While the Republican state official would force the hand of his fellow lawmakers, the legislation actually has no official bearing on the law itself. So, women could not be prosecuted for the procedure using this new law, it merely forces the rhetoric and commentary by elected officials, which might violate the First Amendment.

Strohm insisted the 10th and 14th amendments to the Constitution mean “no one — not a doctor, not a father or a mother — has rights that allow them to murder an unborn child” and the Supreme Court didn’t have the authority to decide the case.

Oklahoma is suffering from a nearly $900 million budget shortfall for which the legislature has yet to pass a budget to fix.

Robert Mercer #racist rawstory.com

Robert Mercer – the “Renaissance Technologies” co-chief executive who bankrolled Donald Trump’s presidential campaign – once said black Americans are “the only racist people remaining in the U.S.,” according to a lawsuit brought by former employee David Magerman.

Mercer who, alongside daughter Rebekah Mercer, fought to install chief White House strategist Steve Bannon and counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway in the Trump administration, allegedly made “a series of racist comments” in conversation with Magerman.

According to a complaint filed by the former “Renaissance” employee, Mercer allegedly told Magerman the US “began to go in the wrong direction after the passage of the Civil Rights Act in the 1960.” Mercer also told Magerman that black people “were doing just fine” before its passage and insisted they are the “only racist people remaining in the U.S.”

“Magerman was stunned by these comments and pushed back” against Mercer, the complaint reads.

Magerman is suing Mercer for wrongful termination after he was fired for criticizing Mercer’s support of the president.

Madison County police #racist rawstory.com

A new lawsuit is alleging Mississippi sheriffs are responsible for ensuring the races and classes are segregated by using checkpoints.

A Think Progress report Monday said that Madison County is one of the most segregated places in the country and it’s allegedly kept that way by the sheriff, his deputies, and other county officials.

The class-action lawsuit claims the sheriff’s department “has implemented a coordinated top-down program of methodically targeting Black individuals for suspicionless searches and seizures.” Filed Monday by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the suit seeks an injunction for what they say is “thousands of victims” in the county.

Think Progress explained that the roadblocks that the deputies set up aren’t like a typical DUI stop. Instead, deputies out of uniform wait in unmarked vehicles and essentially ambush motorists. Such checkpoints only take place in areas of the county with a higher concentration of African-American residents. Those stopped are then forced to submit to allegedly unconstitutional and illegal searches and seizures while simply driving home.

The suit claims it’s similar to Arizona’s “show your papers” law, except there is no law that was ever passed in Mississippi that encouraged checkpoints to search cars in black areas of the state.

“[T]he roadblocks end where the white people start,” said Bessie Thomas, a 50-year resident of the county. Her two churches are typically in the areas that the deputies are setting up their checkpoints. She’s been one of many citizens that have been subjected to the checkpoints and joined the lawsuit.

The suit doesn’t stop with complaints about roadblocks, however. It alleges the deputies frequently conduct illegal searches at homes of residents in traditionally black neighborhoods and homes and they do so without warrants. Deputies have allegedly been known to randomly harm residents while doing so.

In June 2016, resident Quinetta Manning reported half-dozen white deputies that barged into her home at 7:00 a.m. claiming they were searching for marijuana. They never found it. They then tried to get a statement from her about a neighbor. Her husband Khadafy came from the bedroom to tell his wife that she didn’t have to say anything to the police. The man walks with a cane due to a nerve condition and the deputies allegedly cuffed, choked and beat him before dragging him to a police vehicle in his underwear while calling him “Mr. Cripple.” Mrs. Manning captured some of the incident on her cell phone.

Mr. Manning encountered the deputies once again months after they reached out to the ACLU. This time they approached him in a parking and claimed he was “causing trouble” by “having people come around him asking questions.” They then handcuffed him and charged him with driving with a suspended license.

Madison County Sheriff Randall Tucker suddenly stopped tracking the complaints from residents after taking office five years ago. They also have limited statistics on “internal policy information” that they’ve submitted to attorneys, Think Progress reported.

“We already have very good data, and there’s more detail coming in discovery. We’re going to get the internal documents of the police department and the county. Sometimes in internal documents, people say things that get right to the heart of the thing,” Youngwood said.

“Although only 38 percent of Madison County residents are Black, approximately 73% of arrests in Madison County between May and September of 2016 were of Black individuals,” the suit outlines.

Mark Green #fundie rawstory.com

Mark Green, a Republican state senator from Tennessee who is President Donald Trump’s pick to be army secretary, once told a church group that he opposed universal health care because it makes people less likely to embrace Christianity.

As the Washington Examiner reports, Green said in 2015 that it should be the Christian church’s role to help provide sick people with health care so they can more easily convert them to their religion.

“The person who’s in need— they look to the government for the answer, not God, and I think in that way government has done an injustice that’s even bigger than just the creation of an entitlement welfare state,” Green said. “In this setting, I’ll share the story, I think it interrupts the opportunity for people to come to a saving knowledge of who God is.”

Green argued that since Jesus regularly used his powers to cure lepers, the modern-day church should take on a similar role.

“If you look at the Gospels and you go and study the Gospels, every person who came to Christ came to Christ with a physical need,” he said. “It was either hunger or a disease.”

North Carolina #sexist rawstory.com

A loophole in North Carolina law prevents women from revoking consent during sex even if their partner turns violent.

When Amy Guy’s estranged husband, Jonathan Wayne Guy, showed up drunk at her home in December, she decided consenting to sex was the “safer” option.

“Since he was getting angry, I figured it would be better to go ahead and agree to the sex because I figured that was the safer thing for me to do,” Guy told WRAL this week.

When the sex turned violent, Guy said that she begged him to stop. But he refused.

Guy reported the crime and her husband was charged with second-degree rape. But the charge was later dropped due to a 1979 North Carolina Supreme Court case which ruled that consent cannot be revoked once sex begins.

Guy’s husband was convicted of a lesser charge of misdemeanor assault on a female and was sentenced to 10 months in jail.

“I was devastated. I didn’t understand how that could be because I knew I had been raped,” Guy explained. “I don’t understand how the law can say that I wasn’t.”

Guy said that she came forward to speak out against the legal loophole.

“I hope other women get the protection they need,” Guy remarked. “I hope we can change the law. It’s not right.”

Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman agreed that the law needs to be changed.

“We firmly believe that people should have the right to revoke their consent,” Freeman insisted to WRAL. “Anytime someone no longer wishes to be involved in a sexual act — they have the right to withdraw that consent and the right to revoke that consent.”

Democratic state Sen. Jeff Jackson is sponsoring a bill to change the law. But Republicans, who control the Senate, have refused to give the measure a vote.

“We’re the only state in the country where no doesn’t mean no,” Jackson pointed out.

Ben Carson #fundie rawstory.com

Ben Carson, the secretary of the Housing and Urban Development, is reportedly obsessed with making sure low-income residents living in government-sponsored housing aren’t enjoying themselves too much.

A new report from the New York Times reveals that Carson this week visited a homeless shelter in Ohio and was “plainly happy” after he saw that it had “stacked dozens of bunk beds inside” and
“purposefully did not provide televisions” so that residents there wouldn’t get too comfortable.

Elsewhere, Carson expressed consternation that an apartment complex for veterans was so well heeled, as he remarked that it lacked “only pool tables.”

Carson obsessively makes sure that poor people who get government assistance don’t have things too good, the Times notes, because he believes that making life too comfortable for them would create a sense of dependence.

“A comfortable setting— would make somebody want to say: ‘I’ll just stay here. They will take care of me,'” Carson explained.

However, many residents and housing officials in the buildings that Carson toured this week dismissed his appearance there as a dog-and-pony show.

Alzene Munnerlyn, an 87-year-old woman who lives in senior housing, told the Times that she felt used after Carson stopped by her apartment, took a photo with her, and then left after about 10 minutes.

“It was staged,” she said. “It was so fast.”

Bill O'Reilly #fundie rawstory.com

(Admittedly not so much fundie, as face-palmingly stupid. We really need an Morons Say the Darndest Things, maybe.)

Ex-Fox News host Bill O’Reilly came to the defense of Donald Trump, saying the president was right about President Andrew Jackson possibly stopping the Civil War, despite have died years before it began.

In a recent interview with the Washington Examiner, Trump pondered why the Civil War couldn’t have been avoided while claiming that Jackson — who was a slave owner — had a “big heart” and could have stopped it. Trump’s comments were met with derision from the media as well as historians.

O’Reilly, who is not a historian but authored “Lincoln’s Last Days: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever,” had a different take on Twitter, lashing out at the media for attacking the president.

“President Trump is right about Andrew Jackson and the Civil War, the morons on cable news are wrong,” O’Reilly tweeted.

O’Reilly used the tweet as a teaser to draw viewers to his online pay-per-view broadcasts that began last week following his dismissal from Fox News after it was revealed the network paid out more than $13 million in sexual harassment claims.

Donald Trump #fundie rawstory.com

(Tha Alt-Facts Train just keeps on a-runnin'!)

President Donald Trump asserted on Wednesday that the Israel government and the Palestinian Authority “get along unbelievably well.”

During a press conference with State of Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas, Trump praised Palestinian National Authority for its efforts to combat ISIS.

“I also applaud the Palestinian Authority’s continued cooperation with Israel,” Trump said. “They get along unbelievably well— They work together beautifully.”

The U.S. president noted that there could be “no lasting peace” unless all Palestinian leaders spoke out against hate.

“There’s such hatred,” he added. “But hopefully there won’t be such hatred for very long.”

South Carolina pro-lifers #fundie rawstory.com

Three South Carolina senators on Wednesday voted to advance legislation effectively banning abortion in the state, the Post and Courier reports.

Republican Sens. Mike Gambrell, Scott Talley and Rex Rice all voted to push through a “personhood” bill which would define a person as a fertilized egg, also known as a zygote. The male senators overruled two female colleagues who sat on the committee, green-lighting the bill for debate in the full Senate Judiciary Committee.

As the Post and Courier reports, the committee heard from both supporters and critics of the bill. The former invoked the Holocaust and Thomas Jefferson, as well as their own personal religious beliefs, to argue in favor of the “personhood” bill. One candidate in a current South Carolina special state election argued the bill is similar to the state’s decision to remove the Confederate Flag after the Charleston church massacre on 2014.

San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor #fundie rawstory.com

The mayor of San Antonio told a group of conservative Christians that she believes poor people are responsible for their own poverty.

Mayor Ivy Taylor spoke earlier this month to the Christian Coalition, the successor to the nonprofit political organization founded by Pat Robertson, where the 46-year-old Democrat was asked to comment on “systemic causes of generational poverty, reported the Huffington Post.

“Since you’re with the Christian Coalition, I’ll go ahead and put it out there that to me, it’s broken people,” Taylor said. “People not being in a relationship with their creator and therefore not being in a good relationship with their families and their communities and not being productive members of society.”

Tim Nolan #fundie rawstory.com

A former judge now serving as a school board member in suburban Cincinnati has been charged with felony human trafficking of a minor, felony inducing a minor to engage in sex and a third count of giving alcohol to a minor. The indictment was obtained by River City News publisher Michael Monks, who described Nolan as an, “outspoken and controversial” political figure.

Judge Tim Nolan of California, Kentucky represents District 5 on the Campbell County School Board. Yesterday afternoon he was lead into court wearing handcuffs as the “perp walk” was filmed by the local CBS station.

News anchor Cammy Dierking of WKRC described Judge Nolan as an, “outspoken supporter of the local Tea Party.”

The sex trafficking allegedly occurred in August 2016 — while Judge Nolan was serving as the chair of the Donald Trump campaign in Campbell County, KY. Trump beat Hillary Clinton 59% to 35% in the county while voters also elected Nolan.

In April of 2016, Nolan unsuccessfully attempted to remove Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as a delegate to the RNC Convention. Between fighting Senator McConnell in April and the alleged crimes in August, Nolan was appointed by Governor Matt Bevin to the Kentucky Boxing and Wrestling Commission, but was removed only days later when a scandal erupted over a Ku Klux Klan photo posted to Nolan’s Facebook.

Unlike Republican Governor Bevin, the Trump Campaign chose not to drop Judge Nolan after the KKK scandal.

The alleged sex crimes were investigated by Campbell County Police, but Nolan was arraigned in front of Judge Elizabeth Chandler in Boone County District Court as Campbell County Circuit Court Clerk Taunya Nolan Jack is the daughter of the defendant — who served as a Campbell County Judge from 1978 to 1986.

Last November, Judge Nolan won a school board seat for a district with 5,000 students and 700 employees. Nolan beat an incumbent with 10 years of school board experience and 27 years experience as a teacher in the district by campaigning for so-called, “school choice vouchers” and for the elimination of all local property tax revenue for schools.

Rumors of the investigation surfaced in early April when Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Scott Wartman broke the news that Campbell County Police Chief Craig Sorrell had denied an open-records request that sought documents involving any investigation of Tim Nolan.

In announcing that the state’s Special Prosecution Division would be handling the case, the office of Attorney General Andy Beshear stated that, “a core mission of Beshear’s is to bring justice to the victims of rape, sexual assault and human trafficking.”

Nolan is being tracked by a court mandated ankle monitor after being released on $50,000 bond. A preliminary hearing has been scheduled for May 5 in Boone District Court.

Kentucky legislature #fundie rawstory.com

The Kentucky state Senate and House this week approved resolutions that require all dated documents include the words “in the Year of Our Lord.”

According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, both chambers “quietly” passed the resolutions on the final day of the year’s legislative session.

Republican state Sen. Albert Robinson, sponsor of the measure, said that he was “trying anywhere and everywhere I can to respect our creator.”

“It’s important for us to go back to the basics of our U.S. and state constitutions that used that phrase,” he said.

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R), who has officially declared 2017 the “Year of the Bible,” also dates all of his proclamations with “in the Year of Our Lord.”

Larry Pittman #racist rawstory.com

A North Carolina Republican state representative said in a Facebook post that former President Abraham Lincoln was a “tyrant” as bad as German dictator Adolf Hitler.

The Raleigh News and Observer said Wednesday that Concord Republican Rep. Larry Pittman was responding to marriage equality supporters on social media after he introduced a bill to the state House urging the state the defy the U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage for all 50 states.

A commenter told Pittman that the highest court in the land had decided the question and urged him to “get over it.”

Pittman responded, “And if Hitler had won, should the world just get over it? Lincoln was the same sort if tyrant, and personally responsible for the deaths of over 800,000 Americans in a war that was unnecessary and unconstitutional.”

“Another commenter asked Pittman to explain why he believes the Civil War, which resulted in the end of slavery, was ‘unnecessary,’” the Observer said. “He did not respond to the question on the Facebook page.”

Kenneth Adkins #fundie rawstory.com

An anti-gay pastor who said people massacred at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando “got what they deserved” last year has been convicted on eight charges related to child molestation.

The Florida Times Union reports that a jury this week found 57-year-old pastor Kenneth Adkins guilty of child molestation due to a relationship he had with an underage boy and an underage girl who attended his church seven years ago.

In the case, prosecutors claimed that Adkins had methodically groomed two teenagers to have sexual intercourse with him when they were just 15 years old. The pastor’s male accuser said he wanted to come forward so that the pastor would never again be able to similarly take advantage of young teenagers.

The jury came back with a guilty verdict against Adkins after only one hour of deliberation. He is due to be sentenced on April 25th.

Adkins drew national condemnation last year when he sent out a message on social media attacking the victims of Omar Mateen’s shooting rampage at the Pulse nightclub.

“I don’t see none of them as victims,” Adkins tweeted. “I see them as getting what they deserve!!”

Less than two months later, Adkins was arrested by authorities on charges that he molested two parishioners.

Sheridan Thista #fundie rawstory.com

A special education teacher in West Fargo, North Dakota is defending herself for mocking autistic students on social media.

WDAY reported that former Miss Montana Sheridan Tihista admitted that she is the owner of a Twitter account that shared hateful messages about special ed students.

“Writing a research paper about parenting struggles of kids with autism and instead of writing ‘mothers’ I wrote ‘monsters’ #samething,” she tweeted last week.

Sheridan joked that teaching autistic students was easy because she did not have to update her classroom routines because “we loooove routines!”

In another tweet, she called one of her students a “borderline psychopath.”

Sheridan made her Twitter account private on Friday, but it was accessible to anyone prior to that.

The former beauty queen confirmed to WDAY that she was the author of the offensive tweets.

“My tweets may have been distasteful but don’t illustrate what kind of educator I am,” she said in a text message to the station.

A spokesperson for the West Fargo school system said that officials were reviewing Sheridan’s tweets.

Valeri V. Cordòn #fundie rawstory.com

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints needs their members to give their 10 percent tithing money to the church so much that they don’t care if your children go hungry.

Patheos noticed that over the weekend at the Mormon’s biannual General Conference elder Valeri V. Cordón gave a speech demanding the church’s money. He explained that as a child he worked in his father’s factory during school vacations.

“The first question my father always asked after I received my salary was, ‘What are you going to do with your money?'” he recalled. “I know the answer and responded, ‘Pay my tithing and save for my mission.'”

His father asked him the same question each time but he clarified that he had already learned the lesson because his father couldn’t buy food for him after a civil war in Guatemala. He went hungry often times because his parents had to pay the church.

“One day, during those difficult times, I heard my parents discussing whether they should pay tithing or buy food for the children,” he told the audience. “On Sunday, I followed my father to see what he was going to do. After our Church meetings, I saw him take an envelope and put his tithing in it. That was only part of the lesson. The question that remained for me was: what we were going to eat!”

Jesus Christ spoke frequently about the church caring for the poor. “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God,” Christ said in Luke 6:20-21.

Earlier in Luke, Christ is quoted telling his followers, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Reports indicate the Mormon church earns $7 billion each year from the required tithing. No person can become a member of the Mormon church without agreeing to pay the required 10 percent tithing.

Iowa GOP #fundie rawstory.com

An anti-abortion bill being offered by Republicans in Iowa would effectively ban all abortions and give parents rights over the bodies of unmarried adult daughters.

A state House panel on Wednesday voted to send SF 471 — the so-called “personhood” bill — to the full committee. The bill states that life begins at conception, giving fetuses the same rights as people.

Anticipating that the “personhood” provision of the bill will likely be struck down by courts, the GOP bill also provides criminal punishment for anyone who performs an abortion more than 20 weeks after conception. The bill makes exceptions if the life of the mother is at risk. However, it does not make exceptions for rape or incest.

Iowa House Democrats noted on Wednesday that HF 53, to which SF 471 is a successor, also gives parents the legal right to prevent unmarried adult daughters from having an abortion.

The bill states “injunctive relief to prevent a physician from performing abortions” may be obtained “by a parent or guardian of the woman if the woman is less than eighteen years of age or unmarried at the time the abortion was performed or attempted to be performed.”

The Iowa House Human Resources Committee was scheduled to debate Senate File 471 on Wednesday.

George Faught #sexist rawstory.com

On Tuesday, the Oklahoma House met to discuss engrossment of its controversial House Bill-1549, which would prohibit anyone from seeking an abortion in the case of a genetic abnormality.

Oklahoma State Rep. Cory Williams (D) asked Rep. George Faught — who authored the bill — if rape is the “will of God.”

“Well, you know, if you read the Bible, there’s actually a couple circumstances where that happened,” Faught began. “The Lord uses all circumstances. I mean, you can go down that path, but it’s a reality unfortunately,” he said.

Williams followed up, asking if incest is the “will of God.”

“Same answer. Doesn’t deal with this bill,” Faught said. Williams argued that the questions matter to the legislation, given that Faught was unwilling to make exceptions in the case of rape or incest. “You are proffering a divine intervention as the reason why you won’t do that and so I think it is very important.”

“This body wants to know — and myself personally — whether you believe rape and incest are actually the will of God,” Williams questioned.

“It’s a great question to ask,” said Faught. “And, obviously if it happens in someone’s life, it may not be the best thing that ever happened, but — so you’re saying that God is not sovereign with every activity that happens in someone’s life and can’t use anything and everything in someone’s life and I disagree with that.”

New Mexico couple #fundie rawstory.com

A couple who may have urinated on copies of the Quran at a New Mexico library appear to be fans of Ann Coulter’s cannon of work.

According to library staff, the couple put on a right-wing info campaign for other patrons, taking copies of conservative books and putting them “around the library, as if they were placed on display for all to see,” according to a police report obtained by the Santa Fe New Mexican. They included Mark Levin’s “Plunder and Deceit: Big Government’s Exploitation of Young People and the Future” and Ann Coulter’s “Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America,” according a police report.

The man also came in bearing a “large knife, sheathed, on his belt,” and referenced his right to bear arms when staff expressed discomfort. Later, library staff found a “yellowish liquid substance” on copies of the Quran.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations called for the vandalism to be investigated as a hate crime.

“Based on the behavior of the suspects in this case, we urge law enforcement authorities to investigate a possible bias motive for the destruction of library property,” said CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper.

A Santa Fe police spokesperson tells Raw Story police have a person of interest in the case, but can’t formally designate them a suspect yet, in part because they lack video surveillance.

Buncombe County Schools #fundie rawstory.com

School officials in North Carolina have barred a bullied boy from bringing his “My Little Pony” lunch bag to school.

Fourth-grader Grayson Bruce said he understands why other students tease him for liking the cartoon, which promotes the idea that “friendship is magic.”

“Most of the characters in the show are girls, and most of the people put it toward girls, most of the toys are girlie, and surprisingly I found stuff like this?” Grayson said.

But he said classmates have taken their enforcement of gender norms “too far” by punching him, pushing him down, and calling him names.

The 9-year-old’s mother wants those students to be punished, but the school has instead asked Grayson to stop bringing the “Rainbow Dash” bag to school because it’s “a trigger for bullying.”

“Saying a lunchbox is a trigger for bullying is like saying a short skirt is a trigger for rape,” said the boy’s mother, Noreen Bruce. “It’s flawed logic; it doesn’t make any sense.”

Officials from Buncombe County Schools said in a statement that asking Grayson to stop carrying the bag was “an initial step was taken to immediately address a situation that had created a disruption in the classroom.”

They added that the school district took bullying “very seriously” and vowed to take additional, unspecified steps to resolve the issue.

Another North Carolina boy hung himself off the side of his bunk bed in January after classmates tormented him over his love for “My Little Pony.”

Michael Morones survived the suicide attempt, but the 11-year-old suffered brain damage and remains hospitalized until he can be moved to a specialized rehabilitation center.

Maricopa County Trumpians #racist rawstory.com

Maricopa County burnished its reputation as the Trumpiest in America last weekend as hundreds of locals, including heavily armed militiamen, white nationalists and even a few elected officials, gathered to support the 45th president. The ensuing “March for Trump” was as horrifying as it sounds.

“I heard ‘lock her up, lock her up,’ and we still need to pursue that,” announced Arizona Congressman Anthony Kern; a nod to a prominent Trump campaign promise to imprison then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

“If you don’t like it here, go to Syria, go to someplace else,” one attendee shouted.

“I don’t want ’em, as a veteran I don’t want ’em, let ’em go back home,” another seconded. “If they’ve got a problem, let Saudi Arabia take care of ’em.”

Some even dared to tell Dan Cohen of the The Real News Network how they’d make America great again now that Trump was in office. And Muslims weren’t the only religious minority unwelcomed.

“If she is Jewish, she should go back to her country,” a 13-year-old Trump supporter said of a protester.

“This is America, we don’t want Sharia Law,” one attendee explained. “Christian country,” he added.

One man insisted that Senator John McCain was a “secret communist.”

“I think there’s a lot there,” he said of Pizzagate, a deranged right-wing conspiracy theory that Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta was running a child prostitution ring out of a Washington, D.C. pizzeria. “Definitely enough to warrant an investigation.”

The day’s proceedings would grow uglier still.

“I just want to let them know that I can’t wait for the liberal genocide to begin,” an Oath Keeper shouted at a small group of protesters.

“That’s the way to make America great again,” he later told Cohen. “Liberals are destroying the country.”

John Shimkus #fundie rawstory.com

Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) got into a battle with Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA) Thursday during a House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing for the healthcare bill.

While discussing the GOP’s new bill, Doyal asked what Shimkus could possibly have a problem with that is mandated in Obamacare. He rattled off some of the things Americans have said they like, kids being able to stay on their parents’ insurance until 26, not being kicked off for pre-existing conditions or stopping caps on benefits.

Shimkus replied that men shouldn’t have to pay for prenatal care.

“I’m just — I — is that not correct?” Shimkus stuttered. “Should they?”

Doyal seemed so dumbfounded he couldn’t find his words either. He reclaimed his time. “There’s no such thing as ala cart insurance, John,” he explained.

Shimkus said that was the thing he had a problem with. “That’s the point! That’s the point!” he exclaimed. “We want the consumer to be able to go to the insurance market and be able to negotiate on a plan that –”

“You tell me what insurance company will do that,” Doyle interrupted. “There isn’t a single insurance company in the world that does that, John.”

Arkansas GOP #fundie rawstory.com

Although the Supreme Court in 2015 made it legal for same-sex couples to get married across the United States, several lawmakers in Arkansas are trying to challenge that ruling with a new bill that would rescind their state’s recognition of same-sex marriages.

The New Civil Rights Movement notes that GOP Arkansas Rep. Stephen Meeks has introduced a new bill that would make it state policy to only recognize marriage as being between a man and a woman.

“Marriage shall be only between a man and a woman. A marriage between persons of the same sex is void,” the bill reads. “It is the public policy of the State of Arkansas to recognize the marital union only of man and woman— Marriages between persons of the same sex are prohibited in this state.”

Additionally, the bill would not recognize the marriages of same-sex couples who move to Arkansas from states that do recognize same-sex marriages.

Meeks has attracted 20 additional Republican co-sponsors for his bill so far.

Stanley Glanz #racist rawstory.com

Oklahoma jails might not be a racially sensitive place for inmates but apparently, it isn’t for employees of the jail either.

Courtroom testimony in Tulsa, Oklahoma Monday revealed that in 2011 African-American staff at the Tulsa County jail were called “n*gronoids” or “n*groids” by former Sheriff Stanley Glanz, who resigned in 2015, the Daily Beast reported. The revelation is part of a wrongful death suit for 37-year-old Army veteran Elliott Williams, who was paralyzed on the floor of his cell pleading for help for days.

Glanz explained that he didn’t consider the term to be offensive for black inmates because the FBI used the word to describe blacks in the 1960s or 1970s. Court documents allege staff would mark an “N” or a “W” next to inmates’ names to indicate if they were black or white. Tulsa County was forced to settle six lawsuits thanks to Glanz’s words, totalling $1 million in legal fees and settlement payments.

Dan Smolen, the attorney for Williams’ estate, noticed the “N” vs. “W” indication on a memo (PDF) that was sent in 2006. The letters appeared beside “M” or “F” to indicate gender. According to the Daily Beast, it was this memo that was the smoking gun for all of the discrimination suits Glanz and Tulsa County faced.

Deposition transcripts from 2015, quotes Smolen asking Glanz, “How long did the sheriff’s office use that coding system to refer to their African-American employees?”

“Yeah, I don’t know,” Glanz replied. He confessed that the “N” stood for n*gronoid and went on to say that he doesn’t think the indication “might be offensive to an American-American employee.” He later chalked it up to being “police lingo.”

The Williams trial began Feb. 22 before an all-white jury after one person of color was dismissed to handle a family emergency.

Correctional Healthcare Companies Inc. was named as part of the lawsuit but has already settled with the Williams estate. Glanz and current sheriff, Vic Regalado are still fighting the case.

Williams had no criminal record and was arrested during a mental breakdown in an Owasso, Oklahoma hotel room after his wife left him. He was charged with misdemeanor obstruction in October 2011. He complained for days that he couldn’t move or get to water or food trays in his cell. A nurse with Correctional Healthcare Companies Inc. examined Williams via video feed monitoring his cell and told investigators that Williams was “faking” it. He ultimately died of a broken neck and medical examiners ruled he was dehydrated at the time of his death.

The clinic staff came under fire just weeks before Williams was allegedly killed. The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties found there was a “prevailing attitude of indifference among the clinic staff” at the jail, according the Daily Beast cited.

Experts testified last week that Williams’ death would have been prevented with medical care.

Rob Schaaf #fundie rawstory.com

Republican state Senator Rob Schaaf believes that when people die of a drug overdose it “just removes them from the gene pool.” He has led a small group of senators for the last six years against any prescription drug monitoring programs, making Missouri the only state in the country not to monitor.

In one legislative session, Schaaf led filibusters against any proposal to establish a monitoring program and threatened to do so again in other sessions, STAT News reports. Programs vary state by state but all require doctors and pharmacists to enter prescriptions into a database to prevent patients from doctor hopping looking for painkillers. Schaaf is a physician, so it’s unclear if he’s preventing these laws because it might hurt his own bottom line, critics say.

In Oct. 2016, Schaaf explained those databases don’t work and infringe on people’s privacy. “Most people don’t want the government to have that information and have it on a database in which many people can get it,” he said.

A new program that Schaaf is proposing isn’t a typical monitoring program at all, rather it would require doctors to send a list of names of patients they’re considering giving painkillers to the state’s health department. The state would manage a database that would then alert the prescriber to any troubling patterns and the prescriber could decide how to proceed. So, some doctors could continue to charge patients to dole out painkillers regardless of the state’s concerns. No other state operates this way.

The Missouri State Medical Association has come out against the bill, noting that the bill would create a system so different that Missouri couldn’t coordinate with other states. It’s problematic for cities like Kansas City and St. Louis that are close enough to Kansas and Illinois respectively to allow addicts to cross state lines to obtain painkillers.

The National Association of State Controlled Substances Authorities also opposes the bill because it would remove medical decisions about risk from doctors.

“You are charging [the bureau] with making a medical decision and that doesn’t make any sense to me,” Larry Pinson, who serves on the board, told STAT News. “How are they going to know if there is a true medical reason for that patient to need a narcotic?”

Another bill has been proposed by two other Republicans that would form a more traditional program. Schaaf told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he will filibuster it.

“I’d just as soon not have a PDMP. Would they rather have a database that protects privacy or no database at all?” Schaaf said.

There were 1,066 overdose deaths in Missouri in 2016. The company that manufactures oxycodone, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, has expressed support for the legislation that sets up a more traditional program and not Schaaf’s bill.

Roger Marshall #fundie rawstory.com

Rep. Roger Marshall (R-KS) thinks that there is a segment of the population that doesn’t want health care and he doesn’t want to have to pay for them.

According to an interview with STAT News, the Kansas doctor explained that the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare helps the poor but most of those people just don’t want healthcare.

“Just like Jesus said, ‘The poor will always be with us,’” he explained. “There is a group of people that just don’t want health care and aren’t going to take care of themselves.”

When pressed to clarify he simply “shrugged” and explained that the “Medicaid population” is on a “free credit card, as a group” and that those people don’t take care of themselves so they’ll end up costing taxpayers more money.

“So there’s a group of people that even with unlimited access to health care are only going to use the emergency room when their arm is chopped off or when their pneumonia is so bad they get brought [into] the ER,” he said.

For this reason, no one in poverty deserves health care.

As ThinkProgress pointed out, studies show that when people have access to health care they use it and the result is a healthier person.

“Two years after Medicaid coverage was expanded under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in their states, low-income adults in Kentucky and Arkansas received more primary and preventive care, made fewer emergency departments visits, and reported higher quality care and improved health compared with low-income adults in Texas, which did not expand Medicaid,” the study summary outlines.

Marshall is basing his information on his experience working as a doctor and organizing a Kansas hospital. Kansas didn’t start working on their Medicaid expansion proposals until last year. Nothing was ultimately decided, so the legislature pitched another bill in Jan. 2017. As a Kansas doctor and member of Congress’ Doctor Caucus, he’s never worked under the Medicaid expansion.

Word of Faith Fellowship #fundie rawstory.com

An Evangelical church in North Carolina is being accused by dozens of former parishioners of engaging in brutally abusive behavior aimed at controlling every aspect of members’ lives.

The Associated Press, via local news station WYFF, reports that former congregants of the Word of Faith Fellowship in Rutherford County, N.C., are publicly accusing their one-time church of physically abusing parishioners — including babies and children — and of enacting strict control over their adult parishioners’ sex lives.

Among other things, the parishioners tell the AP that “they were regularly punched, smacked, choked, slammed to the floor or thrown through walls in the name of the Lord.” Being young didn’t shield a member from abuse either, as the parishioners claim that even babies were regularly shaken as a method for banishing “demons” from their bodies.

Additionally, the church set out strict guidelines for dating, marriage and sex among parishioners — couples were only allowed to give each other a peck on the cheek on their wedding nights, they allege. What’s more, married couples were only allowed to spend a maximum of 30 minutes having sex, and that sex had to be consummated without any foreplay.

The church, which is led by an Evangelical minister named Jane Whaley, denies any wrongdoing.

Ohio GOP #fundie rawstory.com

Republican state lawmakers in Ohio are refusing to back a bill that would repeal the state’s “spousal exemption” for marital rape.

Democratic state Rep. Greta Johnson told the Akron Beacon Journal that she first introduced HB 234 in 2015 because marital rape is legal in Ohio as long as the rapist uses no force or threat of force, meaning a husband could legally drug and rape his wife.

“As a former prosecutor, I would argue that you could still try to prosecute under the forced rape statute, but unfortunately drugging and raping your spouse in Ohio is not illegal,” Johnson explained.

The 2015 bill died in committee with no Republican support. Johnson blamed the failure on partisanship and opposition to a provision that dropped the 20-year statute of limitations on rape and sexual assault.

Johnson filed the bill again on Friday, this time dropping the provision that removes the statute of limitations. But no Republican lawmaker has stepped forward to co-sponsor the bill.

Brad Miller, a spokesperson for Republican House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger, told the Beacon Journal that the Speaker had not had a chance to review the bill.

“Most of this is really early in the process in terms of what might happen next,” Miller said.

Donald Trump #fundie rawstory.com

John Oliver slams Trump’s trans order: If we want to protect women from predators, ‘ban the president’

In his Sunday evening “Last Week Tonight” episode, comedian John Oliver slammed President Donald Trump, calling him a hypocrite for his executive order against transgender students. The order would allow students to use their bathroom of their choice in schools. Obama’s order also allowed students to wear a tux to prom or a dress in yearbook photos if it is consistent with their gender identity.

Oliver played a clip of a Trump appearance on “The Howard Stern Show” from April 11, 2005, in which Trump brags about being able to walk into women’s dressing rooms during beauty pageants.

“I’ll go backstage before a show and everyone’s getting dressed and ready and everything else. And you know, no men are anywhere,” Trump told Stern. “And I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant and therefore I’m inspecting it. You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. ‘Is everybody okay?’ And you see these incredible-looking women. And so, I sort of get away with things like that.”

Some of those beauty pageant contestants were underage girls, and Buzzfeed interviewed four of them who said that Trump walked in on them during the 1997 Miss Teen USA pageant. At least one of the women was only 15 years old at the time.

“I remember putting on my dress really quick because I was like, ‘Oh my god, there’s a man in here,’” former Miss Teen Vermont Mariah Billado said. Trump reportedly told the girls, “Don’t worry, ladies, I’ve seen it all before.”

Oliver had a better idea for a new Trump executive order.

“Yeah, you do seem to sort of get away with it, which is exactly why if we really want to protect women from predators,” Oliver began. “Let’s stop wasting our time with pointless, vindictive bathroom laws and instead launch a military operation to ban the president himself from women’s rooms nationwide.”

Watch the full video below:

https://vid.me/nnj3

Rick Santorum #conspiracy rawstory.com

CNN contributor Rick Santorum suggested on Sunday that it was a mistake to guarantee health care coverage for people with preexisting conditions because “millions” of them were scamming insurance companies.

During a panel discussion about health care reform, Santorum argued that President Barack Obama’s health care reform law had damaged the health care system to the point that the Republican lawmakers could not “repeal and replace” it at the same time.

“Pre-existing conditions, though it’s very popular,” the former GOP senator opined, “what the reality is today that thousands, maybe approaching millions of Americans, are paying nine months for insurance. Why? Because you pay for your insurance for nine months, there’s a provision in Obamacare that says you can’t be thrown off your plan for three months.”

“So, you stop paying in September until the end of the year,” he continued. “You have a right to guaranteed [coverage for] preexisting conditions. You can buy a new plan in January. So people are paying nine months for 12 months of care. And it’s happening more and more and more as people get the gig.”

“Obamacare is a failure! But you’re going to need 60 votes to change preexisting conditions and other things to make the system work. And that’s the problem of repeal and replacing is you can’t do it because it’s a broken system.”

Santorum, however, offered no evidence that “millions of Americans” were using Obamacare’s protections for people with preexisting conditions to scam health insurance companies.

Unnamed student #racist rawstory.com

A Catholic high school in Louisiana has apologized “to anyone who was offended” after a racist essay about Black History Month went viral.

WBRZ reported that St. Michael the Archangel in Baton Rouge explained in a letter to parents that an essay making the rounds on the internet was “contrary to the teachings of the church.”

According to WBRZ, the essay was written by a white student who said she was “unpleased” by the Black History Month assignment.

“I’m not fully racist but I hate almost every black person,” the essay begins. “They think they run everything but in reality are an embarrassment to this country.”

The student goes on to justify slavery based on misconceptions about the Bible.

“Think about it though,” she writes. “None of the apostles were different ethics [sic]. They were all white. There was [sic] no black nor Hispanic [sic] mentioned really back when Jesus time was. All the stories we hear in the Bible are about like mainly white people. So since God knows everything that is going to happen than [sic] he would have done something about that.”

The student explains that she cannot support Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s message about equality because black people make her “petrified to leave my house.”

“But we are supposed to give them a month right?” the essay continues. “When they cannot even wear pants that fit them? When they shoot cops for protecting people?”

“Sad to say this but maybe things would be better if they would have stayed slaves,” the student concludes. “I should not have to be scared for my life when I see them in my sight.”

In a letter to parents, school officials said they “apologize to anyone who was offended by this writing.”

“The ideas and the writings of this student, and their subsequent posting on the web, were not within the school’s control,” the letter stated. “We look at this incident as a teachable moment and as an opportunity for education and growth for all involved, particularly through reflection on the wisdom of our Catholic faith.”