Monthly Archives: July 2017

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Mark Meadows says that his group wants to delay the traditional August recess until work is accomplished on health care, the debt ceiling and tax reform. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP

House conservatives are launching a late effort to force their colleagues to vote on an outright repeal of Obamacare.

Leaders of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus on Wednesday evening will jump-start a process intended to force the measure a mirror of the 2015 repeal proposal that President Barack Obama vetoed to the floor as early as September.

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The idea, sources say, is to create pressure on GOP leaders in the House and Senate ensuring Republicans dont give up on their seven-year campaign promise.

There's no reason we should put anything less on President Trump's desk than we put on Obama's, said Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.). "President Trump wants to sign repeal it's time Congress send it to him."

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Their effort is unlikely to result in a bill landing on Donald Trumps desk many Republicans have rejected calls to eliminate the core of Obamacare without having a comprehensive replacement plan ready. But if the group garners enough signatures to trigger the floor vote, it would force many mainstream and moderate Republican lawmakers into the uncomfortable position of rejecting a repeal measure they backed just two years ago.

Meadows and Jim Jordan will have the backing of conservative outside groups, like Club for Growth and FreedomWorks. The Club and activist group Tea Party Patriots launched a website Wednesday called Obamacare Repeal Traitors to pressure senators who opposed the latest GOP efforts to replace Obamacare. The senators defections have all but derailed Republican efforts to replace the 2010 health care law.

The Freedom Caucus strategy begins with a technical push to force the 2015 repeal measure to the House floor. Meadows and Jordan are seeking a discharge petition, which would enable them to bypass House leaders to put the bill up for a vote. To begin that process, the lawmakers plan to file a special rule Wednesday evening to consider the proposal. That rule will sit in the Rules Committee for at least seven business days.

After seven days, lawmakers can file a discharge petition, which requires signatures from at least half the House 218 members to bring the bill to the floor. Theyre unlikely to succeed, but the effort would quickly identify which Republicans rescinded their support for the 2015 bill.

The group could receive some support from conservatives in the Republican Study Committee, who talked during a Wednesday meeting about asking GOP leaders to allow them to vote on a repeal-only bill before recess.

The push by House conservatives has grown more urgent in light of the apparent failure by the Senate to adopt an Obamacare replacement plan. The House narrowly passed its own version in May, but Senate efforts collapsed this week, after moderates rejected the plans deep reductions in Medicaid funding.

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Freedom Caucus to try to force vote on Obamacare repeal - Politico

In this image made from video released by the Democratic Voice of Burma, Lawi Weng, Aye Nai and Pyi Phone Aung leave the court in Hsipaw, Shan state, Myanmar, on July 18, 2017.Democratic Voice of Burma/AP

(YANGON, Myanmar) In the old, military-ruled Myanmar, it would not have been a surprising scene: three journalists, bound together in chains, raising shackled hands in unison and speaking out against their repressive government.

But this moment, captured on video by a local news organization, the Democratic Voice of Burma, was not from another era. It was recorded Tuesday, and it underscores how little has changed in the Southeast Asian country since the party led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate and longtime opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi won elections a year and a half ago.

"Just look at these chains. This is what we get for being journalists," said Lawi Weng, one of three reporters detained by the military on June 26 for covering a drug-burning ceremony organized by an ethnic rebel group in the northeast.

"How can we say this is democracy?" Weng asked before entering a police van headed back to jail after a brief court hearing in Shan state's Hsipaw township.

The reporters each face three years in prison for violating the nation's Unlawful Associations Act, which was designed to punish people who associate with or assist "illegal" groups in this case, the Ta'ang National Liberation Army, one of more than a dozen small rebel armies that control patches of territory in the north and east. The rebels burned a cache of narcotics to mark the United Nations' International Day Against Drug Abuse.

Members of various rebel groups, along with their sympathizers and some aid workers, have been prosecuted under the Unlawful Associations Act. But rarely, if ever, have journalists many of whom travel regularly to zones controlled by the Ta'ang and other insurgent groups.

Read More: The Arrest of Three Journalists Shows a Disturbing Lack of Press Freedom in Democratic Myanmar

It's unclear why these journalists were singled out. Suu Kyi's government, which is struggling to broker a nationwide cease-fire with the country's rebel armies, simply says they broke the law and should have informed security forces before visiting a conflict zone.

The arrests, combined with the prosecution of critics who have spoken out against the nation's military and civilian authorities, have surprised many who thought Suu Kyi's rise would herald a new era of freedom of expression.

Suu Kyi spent nearly 15 years under house arrest during the nation's long era of military rule, and she was praised worldwide for leading the struggle for democracy. Although her administration is officially in charge, the military still wields most power.

Shawn Crispin, Southeast Asia representative of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said Suu Kyi's administration continues to use "antiquated laws to threaten and imprison journalists."

"Reporters are still being targeted for reprisals and imprisoned for their reporting," Crispin said. "Frankly, that's not what we thought an Aung San Suu Kyi-led government would condone or promote. It's been massively disappointing."

The New York-based press freedom group, which has called for the reporters to be released, had hoped the administration would "prioritize amending or scrapping these draconian provisions," Crispin said. "To our dismay, they've chosen to use them to suppress criticism instead."

Since Suu Kyi's party swept elections in November 2015, at least 67 lawsuits have been filed under the controversial Telecommunications Law, which had been employed by the former military governments to punish dissent and prosecute those who took part in the pro-democracy struggle.

Read More: Aung San Suu Kyi Struggles to Unite a Fractured Myanmar

The law targets anyone "extorting, coercing, restraining, wrongfully defaming, disturbing, causing undue influence or threatening to any person."

At least a dozen people have been charged so far, according to the Telecom-Law Research Team, an independent research group. Several suits have involved alleged insults against Suu Kyi, among them a woman now serving a six-month jail term for criticizing her on social media.

In addition to Lawi Weng, who works for the Irrawaddy media outlet, the two other journalists detained after crossing into rebel territory in Shan state are Aye Nai and Pyae Bone Naing, both from the Democratic Voice of Burma.

Their court appearances have repeatedly been changed without notice, fueling speculation authorities want to minimize media coverage.

Charles Santiago, a Malaysian lawmaker who chairs the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, said that "covering developments in conflict areas is already dangerous work."

"Journalists shouldn't have to add to their list of worries the possibility that the military might imprison them based on a century-old law that clearly wasn't intended to apply to them and should have been repealed altogether long ago," he said.

Speaking after their court appearance Tuesday, journalist Aye Nai said Democratic Voice of Burma reporters had traveled repeatedly to other rebel zones controlled by insurgent groups like the Kachin, the Karen and other minorities fighting for greater autonomy.

They had not been charged before, and should not be now, he said.

The government has reached provisional cease-fires with many of the rebel groups. The Ta'ang are among several still fighting, however, along with allies Kachin Independence Army and the Shan State Army-South.

"The government that was elected by the people should ... amend these laws," Aye Nai said. And even though they have detained us, "the belief we have in media will never fade away. We (will) do our job."

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Journalists Remain Shackled in Aung San Suu Kyi's Newly Democratic Myanmar - TIME

A rainbow coloured placard in the colors of the LGBT flag [Illustrative]. (photo credit:REUTERS)

LGBT activists plan to demonstrate Thursday against a recent government statement describing LGBT relationships as unusual and deeming LGBT people unsuitable to adopt children. We are against the states discriminatory position. They should be allowed to adopt as is any other couple.

The LGBT community was rightly incensed at this challenge to the equality of rights in our modern society. After we were exposed to another narrow-minded and low government act, the Israeli LGBT association declared in a public statement, we choose not to remain silent.

This is timely, for the accusatory statement was contained in a report submitted in preparation for a High Court hearing of a petition submitted by the Association of Israeli Gay Fathers and the Israel Religious Action Center of the Reform Movement.

The petition aims to secure the rights of same-sex couples to adopt children in an entirely equal way as the customary practice, where both parents are full guardians of the child.

Present illogical regulations recognize only one person as the legal guardian of the child, and not the gay couple.

This petition for equal rights comes against the background of mounting attacks on Jewish LGBT activists abroad for the crime of Zionism. The clear and undeniable nexus of anti-Zionism and antisemitism means that Israels treatment of its own gay community is another target that must be defended by the state.

Israel cannot ignore the insulting fact that three Jewish participants in Chicagos recent Dyke March who were carrying rainbow flags emblazoned with the Star of David were expelled from the event, because they were supporters of Israel.

LGBT activism teaches all of us, gay or not, the importance of inclusiveness. An egregious example of this is occurring in Britain, where a Jewish school risks closure for refusing to teach LGBT issues.

According to an Ofsted (the Office for Standards in Education, Childrens Services and Skills) report, the school contravenes the Equality Act 2010, which makes it mandatory for British schools to educate on a range of protracted characteristics, including age, disability, race, sex and sexual orientation. This means that pupils have a limited understanding of the different lifestyles and partnerships that individuals may choose in present-day society.

LGBT Jews abroad say its increasingly difficult to be pro-Israel. According to Idit Klein, executive director of Keshet, an LGBT Jewish organization, the tensions over Israel in the broader LGBT community also exist within the LGBT Jewish community. Conversations over Israel have become increasingly touchy, because people have overlapping identities.

Theres an extra layer of identification as a group that experiences injustice, so that adds a layer of intensity, the Keshet leader said. It makes it a struggle to enable people to be in one space together. I havent figured it out and nor has anyone else.

Except, perhaps, in Israel, where more than 200,000 people packed Tel Avivs streets for this years annual LGBT Pride Parade, making it the largest-ever pride parade in the Middle East and Asia, according to the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality.

The Tel Aviv event included an impromptu protest by gay activists. We are not protesting the gay pride parade, we are participating in the parade as protesters, said Noa Bassel, an organizer with Pinkwashing Israel. What we are protesting against is the PR that Israel carries out using the gay community, and we claim abuse and that [Israel is] not giving us our rights and is portraying itself as liberal and democratic when it essentially is not.

Discrimination will continue as long as there are homophobic politicians. A case in point is Bayit Yehudi MK Moti Yogev, who tweeted that a Jewish family is a father and mother who naturally bring life into the world.

This understandably sparked the outrage of LGBT rights activists and accusations of homophobia from Zionist Union MK Omer Bar-Lev.

One politician who should champion this years upcoming Jerusalem Pride Parade as a teaching moment is Mayor Nir Barkat, who should reconsider his announced decision not to participate. Israels capital should be led from above by its mayor, not from below by a minority of the city council. He should lead the march on the second yahrzeit of the murder of 16-year-old Shira Banki by a religious fanatic at the 2015 parade.

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Freedom to adopt - Opinion - Jerusalem Post - The Jerusalem Post mobile website

Over the holiday weekend, rummaging through old file boxes in the barn, I came across a folder of my five-minute commentaries aired on WDEV radio 30 years ago. The final one in 1988, entitled Vermonts Future, got my attention. So here it is, slightly updated:

L ast years debate on school centralization and this years battle over growth control have brought to center stage the question: What kind of future can we expect for Vermont? Two very different pictures have emerged. One is Vermont as land of freedom. The other is Vermont as land of community. These twin themes, freedom and community, have swirled back and forth throughout Vermont history, and indeed, through American history.

The land of freedom is the land of individual rights. It is the land of private property ownership, a competitive economic system and the opportunity to grow and become. In the land of freedom, independent citizens, their property and their rights secured by a limited government, will be happy, productive and compassionate toward the less fortunate. They will come together, not as subjects, but as free and independent citizens, to meet great crises and govern themselves.

The land of community is the land of working together, of shared values, of cooperation. It is the land of we, as in we dont want Vermont to turn into New Jersey. In the land of community citizens are expected to yield to the will of the majority rather than pursue their personal interests and private rights.

The land of freedom can be any scale, but the land of community has definite limits. For some purposes all of Vermont is a community. We were a community when as one we spoke out for halting the spread of slavery and sent our soldiers to save the Union. We were a community with all Americans when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

But in most things we do, Vermont is not a true statewide community, a fact long recognized in the old Mountain Rule, which alternated the governorship between the east and west sides of the Green Mountains. Bennington and Newport have very little in common, in any practical sense. The real battle for the soul of Vermont is over the extent to which the people in control of state government will force their idea of community on people who rarely have much in common.

The backers of the land of community idea seem always eager to homogenize our society. They want to equalize, standardize and unify what they conceive to be the various diverse parts of a statewide community. In doing so, they give short shrift to the advocates of freedom, for they see freedom and individual rights as bothersome obstructions to their goal of creating a land of community in all things, regulated and enforced by the central power in Montpelier.

It is the land of community people who think up school regionalization schemes, so that all communities will be efficiently managed from Montpelier to produce the same thing for all of our children.

It is the land of community people who want growth managed from the center, for the benefit of everybody. It is the land of community people who deplore the private ownership of property, for they are convinced that with freedom and property, individuals will undermine their vision of the common good.

To the land of freedom people, individual liberty comes first. They believe that only independent men and women can govern themselves in a republic, and they believe that centralized control over the things that are locally different signals the beginning of a tyranny which aims to strip them of their rights. Thus they want to keep control of their childrens schools, and they oppose every attempt to strip them of their rights in land and, for that matter, their right to own guns.

The freedom advocates are today on the defensive, as the centralizers and standardizers and controllers have the upper hand in our state government. But the time may come when the pendulum swings back and I for one hope it does.

My signoff for that 1988 commentary was: This will be my last broadcast with you, for today I am becoming a candidate for the state Senate. Ive enjoyed doing these shows, and I hope you have enjoyed listening or if you have hated every minute of them, I hope Ive at least made you think.

John McClaughry is vice president of the Ethan Allen Institute (www.ethanallen.org).

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Freedom and community revisited - Rutland Herald

An image from the documentary City of Ghosts. Photograph: Dogwoof

Matthew Heinemans documentary is about a remarkably courageous group in Raqqa, Syria, who have formed something between a digital citizen journalist collective and a resistance cell. When Islamic State moved into the city after the anti-Assad insurgency and established a brutal reign, these people took out their smartphones and formed an activist group called Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently. They uploadedtheir videos to YouTube and social media, and showed the world the violence and sheer psychopathic spiteof Isis. This film showed me horrible images Ive neverseen before, having been squeamish about searching them out online: beheadings, executions, mockcrucifixions and Nazi-style placard shaming. RBSS, as they are known, took on Isis in the digital media war, matching the jihadis increasingly sophisticated propagandavideos with material of their own. Some of their most devastating images concern Isiss ruthless recruitment of children.As RBSS put it: Children are Isiss firewood. Now most people in the group have taken refuge in Germany, where they live in fear of being assassinated. Their fight goes on. This is a powerful testament to a new kind ofcitizens digitaljournalism.

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City of Ghosts review astonishing look at Syrian freedom fighters - The Guardian

Editor's note: FreedomFest, held every July in Las Vegas, is the largest annual gathering of libertarians in the country. Today is the first day of the four-day long conference, which is being headlined in its 10th year by William Shatner, John Stossel, Greg Gutfeld, and others. Taking inspiration from the site Humans of New York, Reason is happy to offer Humans of FreedomFest, a series of portraits and brief interviews with various attendees. This is the first installment.

Sarah Rose Siskind, Reason

"This hand and this tattoo is in more pictures with celebrities than anybody else's hand or tattoo. I've got the most famous GOP tattoo."

Are you the black sheep of the family?

"Oh yeah. My dad was a Marine and a Democrat. And he was one of those guys who voted because of my mom, so his vote wouldn't be canceled out. I've been a conservative and a hippie for most of my life."

Sarah Siskind, Reason

"My dad couldn't make it to this year's [FreedomFest], so I came with [my cousin's Jaden's] family. I earned my money so I could come."Roy Lee (above, right)

You earned your money so you could come?

"I work. I do a little bit of flooring. Construction. I'm helping pay for gas. Paying for food."

"Our parents teach us to be individuals."Jaden

Sarah Rose Siskind, Reason

What is your most controversial opinion?

"Among the general public? Eliminating the Federal Reserve. Among libertarians? I'm not a huge open-borders guy. There's a joke that if you get five libertarians in a room, you'll get 10 opinions."

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"Humans of Freedom Fest": Portraits from the Largest Annual Gathering of Libertarians - Reason (blog)