Texas women’s program lost funding for kicking out Planned Parenthood. The Trump administration just restored it.

The Statesman  "The Trump administration Wednesday restored federal funding to the state’s women’s health program. A previous version of the program lost the money seven years ago after Texas officials had excluded Planned Parenthood.
" The $350 million boost to Healthy Texas Women, which provides certain health services, including family planning to low-income women at no cost, will be distributed over five years. The Obama administration withheld funding in 2013.
"State officials had said taxpayer money shouldn’t go to abortion providers or affiliates. Planned Parenthood at the time was the largest provider of women’s health services in the program, and it did not provide abortions in the program.
"The program has relied on state money in the meantime. 
"Gov. Greg Abbott celebrated the restoration of the federal funding, which comes from Medicaid. 
“ 'The Lone Star State is once again in partnership with the federal government to provide meaningful family planning and health services while fostering a culture of life,” Abbott said in a statement. “I am grateful to President Trump and his administration for approving this waiver, and for his commitment to protecting the unborn while providing much-needed health resources to Texas women.”  . . .Keep Reading

On the Bidens, Schiff Opened the Door

Andrew C. McCarthy: If they have to testify, they have the Democrats’ chief impeachment manager to thank.

"You opened the door"
"Trial lawyers live in fear of that phrase.
"When a trial starts, both sides know what the allegations are. Both have had enough "discovery to know what the adversary will try to prove. Just as significantly, both know what their own vulnerabilities are. A litigator spends his pretrial time not just laying the groundwork for getting his own evidence admitted by the court; each side works just as hard on motions to exclude embarrassing or incriminating testimony — evidence that would be damaging to that side’s position but that a court may be persuaded to exclude because it is not clearly relevant.

Do you care to make a statement, Mr. Biden?

""For an advocate, it is a coup when the judge rules that harmful testimony is excluded. But such rulings always come with a warning label: Don’t open the door. That is, don’t do anything that makes the otherwise irrelevant evidence relevant."President Trump’s impeachment trial has a Biden door. Adam Schiff has thrown it wide open.
"Not content to quote from President Trump’s actual call with President Zelensky of Ukraine, Schiff insisted on presenting a “parody” that, he maintained, conveyed the unspoken essence of Trump’s message: “I want you make up dirt on my political opponent, understand? Lots of it.”
"In sum, the House’s chief prosecutor represented to the American people that President Trump had asked his Ukrainian counterpart to fabricate a false case against Biden. In any court in America, that would open the door to the Trump defense team to show that this was not the president’s intention at all; he was simply asking Zelensky to look into a situation that cried out for an inquiry." . . .  Full article here.
Toons added by TD

A Year Ago, the Media Mangled the Covington Catholic Story. What Happened Next Was Even Worse.

Reason, via The Volokh Conspiracy

Journalists and pundits who frantically doubled down on their initial bad takes deserve more criticism.

"On the weekend of January 18, 2019, a short video appeared on Twitter that purported to show a group of Catholic high school boys—one young man, Nicholas Sandmann, in particular—harassing a Native American elder named Nathan Phillips on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
"One year later, the media's reckless mishandling of the story stands as an important warning against the kind of agenda-driven, outrage-mongering clickbait that unfortunately thrives in the world of online journalism.
"But no less noteworthy was the news cycle that followed the initial flawed coverage, which featured a host of ideologically-motivated partisans doubling down on their initial assumption, digging for new information to justify it, and reassuring themselves that they were right all along. Sandmann and his MAGA hat-wearing friends had identified themselves as members of Team Trump, and thus the national shaming they endured was deserved, this thinking went. Indeed, those who had defended the boys by disputing some aspects of the encounter—including me, in an article for Reason that changed many people's minds about what had happened—were engaged in "gaslighting": trying to make people think that something they saw hadn't really happened.
"Sandmann's subsequent lawsuits have kept the Covington-sympathetic public focused on several of the outlets that misreported the initial story: CNN, The Washington Post, and others. Indeed, these publications certainly deserve criticism, independent of the merits of the individual lawsuits. But these outlets' Covington-related sins pale in comparison to those who continued to malign the teens long after the additional video footage was available." . . .

Barbie and Ken's life under socialism

The People's Cube  "Teach your kids socialist values with this play kit. Includes Barbie and Ken in the kitchen of a Soviet communal apartment, with a realistic look and feel of the era, circa 1970s or 1980s.
"Guaranteed to turn all children into Bernie-voting socialists when they grow up.
"Just tell them that in Soviet Russia, dolls play you!"

. . . "Yekaterinburg-based artist and photographer Lara Vychuzhanina takes Barbie and Ken on a trip through time, back to the U.S.S.R.
"A stern Ken never stands up from the table. Barbie hangs laundry, sips coffee and daydreams. The young couple’s cat keeps a laser focus on the wall. Each scene reveals a new detail of Barbie’s journey overseas — even the food is Soviet."
Much more here.
Via The Moscow Times;  created by Lara Vychuzhanina, doll photographer

Bernie's Iowa team on lockdown after embarrassing video goes viral

WND  "Several of Bernie Sanders' Iowa state directors locked their Twitter accounts after the conservative activist organization Project Veritas leaked a video of a Sanders campaign field organizer named Kyle Jurek making threats of political violence.

"Some have unlocked their accounts since then."
From the Project Veritas site.

BREAKING: Iowa  @BernieSanders State Directors ALL LOCKING THEIR ACCOUNTS:

An Iranian Comments On The Rage of the Democrats

In short, America is on a precarious path to lose its freedom and our Constitution we have cherished for over 200 years.  We must accept that the current Democrat Party is no longer the party of Kennedy.  It has become the greatest threat to our national security and our survival as a nation.

Amil Imani  "What underlies the rage of the Democrat Party and of the leftist Democrat Establishment vis-à-vis President Donald Trump?

"Over forty years ago, during my high school years in Iran, my father and I had a conversation.  He was an avid Republican, even though he lived on the other side of the world.  Right before I prepared to leave Iran for the U.S., he gave me some fatherly advice.  He explained why the Democrat Party was bad for America, bad for Iran, and bad for the world.  He advised me that if I ever became a US citizen, I should never vote for Democrats.  After all these years, I now understand what he meant by those words of wisdom.

"For over twenty years, I did not vote simply because I was not a U.S. citizen.  Even after I became one, I was not fully aware of the depth of this party's evil ideology, although eight long years of Obama's presidency was enough to make me realize where America was headed and what brand of Democrats were in charge.  But it was not until the election of President Trump that exposed just how corrupt the Democrats and every government institution were.  Now that that genie is out of the bottle, they cannot put it back in.  Public trust is out the door — all because it was Hillary's turn to be president." . . .

The centerpiece of the impeachment circus: Adam Schiff

Rush Limbaugh gets it. In the first hour of his show Wednesday, he advocated making Schiff “the center of this so-called trial.”Thomas Lifson

Rich Terrell

The Top Seven Lies Adam Schiff Has Told to Boost Impeachment
"Adam Schiff is a liar.
     "Like most Democrats, he cares more about ousting Trump than the facts—so much, in fact, he’s repeatedly turned a blind eye to the facts to smear Trump in the hopes of swaying public opinion against the man who dared to defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
     "It’s already been proven that Democrats have plotted the impeachment of Donald Trump since he first took office. For over three years they threw anything they could at him, and Schiff was doing his part to advance the narrative that Trump should be impeached by pushing bogus information and outright lying to the public. Below are seven examples of Schiff’s lies designed to boost the impeachment of President Trump." . . .

CNN Analyst Fabricates Quotes From GOP Senators to Smear Trump, Fox News
"On Wednesday afternoon, a CNN analyst cooked up a "conversation" between two Republican senators in order to smear President Donald Trump, his party, and Fox News. He later admitted to having completely fabricated the quotes, but only after The Washington Post's self-described conservative Jennifer Rubin retweeted his "report."
" 'Overheard convo between two Republican Senators who only watch Fox News. 'is this stuff real? I haven't heard any of this before. I thought it was all about a server. If half the stuff Schiff is saying is true, we're up s**t's creek. Hope the White House has exculpatory evidence,'" Joe Lockhart, the CNN analyst and the former White House press secretary for Bill Clinton, tweeted. His message received 5,600 retweets and 20,600 "likes.' " . . More...

Nothing to See Here: Public Radio, TV Networks Ignore Adam Schiff's Fake Quotes From Trump Transcript from 2019:  . . . "Outside of Fox News, Schiff's fake quotes seemed to go unnoticed by the mainstream media. In fact, taxpayer-funded NPR and PBS interviewed the congressman on Thursday night, and neither interview included questions about the fake quotes." . . . More...

The Gateway Pundit

Two hours of dog barking: Adam Schiff tries to bore us into Getting Trump "Adam Schiff is a man of very peculiar reasoning. Like a dolt shouting louder at a foreign-language speaker to make him 'understand,' Schiff's decided that if he just keeps talking enough with his long, long, long speeches, we will all suddenly turn into anti-Trumpsters and throw Trump from office." . . 

. . . "The boredom set in on the first day, Tuesday, and carried on in to Wednesday as Lead House Manager Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) droned on for hours." . . .

          Buck Sexton 

Starting to worry that Republican Senators forced to sit through hours and hours of Schiff’s sanctimonious BS marathon may get desperate and offer to vote for anything just to make the pain stop

The impeachment show’s third act will focus on Schiff’s lies and evil plans

. . . "But Democrats forget at their own peril that President Trump is the most successful reality television producer in the history of the medium. He not only understands how drama is played out in a way that satisfies mass audiences, he is a practitioner of the dramatic form of reality TV in which real people react to structured situations, and act out their roles without following an actual script.   . . .

. . . Students of drama realize that successful shows generally follow a three-act structure, with the first act introducing the characters and an ”inciting incident” leading to a dramatic situation, usually a confrontation. Trump’s election and the immediate move to impeach him constitute the first act of this drama.

"Students of drama realize that successful shows generally follow a three-act structure, with the first act introducing the characters and an ”inciting incident” leading to a dramatic situation, usually a confrontation. Trump’s election and the immediate move to impeach him constitute the first act of this drama." . . .

. . . "Chris Wallace of Fox News, no fan of President Trump, yesterday confronted Schiff for totally misrepresenting what Mick Mulvaney said in his now infamous press conference. This video lasts 94 seconds, but The Right Scoop summarizes:" . . .

Even the Australians notice the bored senators

Sky News Australia

✔

Sky News Contributor Cameron Stewart says "even the senators are bored" of the impeachment trial of US President Donald Trump. https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6125637529001?fbclid=IwAR2r8G-4tB5FUd2hiiIxsKxrF79__yovX4ihR_g6pAD2IPWA1PFnIfbskx0 …