Obama issues executive order that keeps notice of criminal record off federal job applications

By FoxNews.com  |  November 2, 2015

President Obama on Monday announced a new executive order that prevents federal agencies from making job-applicants reveal they have a criminal record as part of his overall criminal justice reform effort.

The so-called “drop the box” initiative would allow prospective employees not to check a box on some federal applications that acknowledges a criminal record.

“It is relevant to find out if somebody has a criminal record,” Obama said at an event in Newark, N.J. 

“I’m not suggesting ignore it. I’m suggesting that when it comes to applications, give folks a chance to get through the door.”

The president said 19 states and major U.S. companies such as Koch Industries, Target and Walmart have already removed the question from applications, and he urged Congress to pass legislation to expand the effort.

“My hope is this becomes a basic principle across our society,” said Obama, whose Democratic two-term presidency ends in just 14 months.

New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie signed such legislation into law last year.

Criminal justice reform has gotten bipartisan support on Capitol Hill from Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the chamber’s Judiciary Committee, and Kentucky’s Rand Paul, a 2016 presidential candidate.

New Jersey Sen. Corey Booker is among congressional Democrats supporting such reform.
The president in his announcement also called for more programs to help former inmates reenter society.

He said roughly 70 million Americans have some sort of criminal record and that making sure they can find jobs, housing and education is good for the economy.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

New York City EMT suspended without pay for leaving ambulance to aid choking girl

By Matthew Diebel  |  USA Today  |  October 29, 2015

A New York City EMT who tried to save the life of a 7-year-old girl who choked on her lunch says he has been suspended without pay for making an unauthorized stop, according to local media.

Qwasie Reid and a partner were transporting a nursing home patient last Wednesday, local news channel NY1 reported, when they were flagged down in Brooklyn by a man who told them that a student was choking.

Reid told the station he believed a choking girl took priority over the transport, and, against his partner's urging, administered aid to the 7-year-old, who he said had already turned blue. No one at the school was assisting the girl, he said.

Reid told local TV station WABC that he cleared out the girl's mouth, put an oxygen mask on her, used a defibrillator and started CPR.

"She was blue in the face and lips. No response. Unconscious unresponsive," Reid told the station. He told local news website dnainfo.com that that the fire department arrived three to four minutes after he began CPR.

"I don't regret it," he added. "I'd do it again. If I know there's a child choking, I'm going to do my best to help her. I made a vow to save a life. If I had to jump out of the ambulance again, I'd do anything. I pray to God she feels better," Reid told WABC.

"As an EMT, I don’t care about your money," Reid told dnainfo.com. "There was a child choking. I’m worried about them firing me, but I did a good deed. I just feel like I’m being penalized for something and I haven’t done anything wrong."

Increase Your IQ: 5 Things You Should Be Doing Every Day

By Geil Browning  |  Inc.com  |  June 16, 2015

Young children develop, learn, and change daily. Adopt a 4-year-old learning style to build your intelligence at any age.

If you want to witness the magic of the human brain in action, play the matching game with a 4-year-old–you know, the classic game where the tiles are arranged face down and players take turns flipping them over to find pairs. You’ll see what I mean as you watch that wonderful little brain doing its thing. It’s amazing, and when you realize you’ve been outdueled in a brain game by a child, it’s just a bit humbling.

Obviously, young children develop, learn, and change very quickly. They show drastic improvement in academic, physical, and social skills all the time. One day they can’t, and literally the next day they can. Does it make you a little bit jealous? Imagine what you could accomplish with that amazing ability.

Well, there is hope for us adults. We’ve known for quite a while that IQ can be increased, that you’re not just stuck with what you’re born with. Andrea Kuszewski explains that fluid intelligence, which refers to the capacity to learn new things, retains that information, uses it to solve new problems, and can be strengthened over time. She suggests that if one implements five elements into life every day, or at least as much as possible, cognitive capacity can be increased. Those elements are to seek novelty, challenge yourself, think creatively, do things the hard way, and network.

So, is it any wonder that children learn at the rate they do? Every sight, sound, word, taste — everything — is new and novel to a child. And, when you’re a kid, everything is challenging. Kids make use of creativity to solve problems from the time they are born. They discover the easy way via the hard way. And finally, they are constantly networking by simply meeting new people all the time.

So, kids are engaging in brain strengthening activities all the time, almost by default. For us adults, it likely takes a more concerted effort. It’s so easy to stay within our comfort zones, stick with our routines, and never change anything up. Doing that may be practical, productive and convenient…it’s just not making us any smarter.

Muslim truck drivers refuse to deliver beer, win $240,000 lawsuit

By Molly Jackson  |  Yahoo News  |  October 27, 2015

An Illinois jury awarded $240,000 in damages and back pay to two former truck drivers who claimed religious discrimination when they were fired in 2009 after refusing to make beer deliveries.

A jury was convened to determine damages after US District Court Judge James E. Shadid ruled in favor of Mahad Abass Mohamed and Abdkiarim Hassan Bulshale when Star Transport admitted liability in March. The men, both of whom are Somali-American Muslims, were represented by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). 

Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, employers must make accommodations for workers' religious beliefs unless doing so would impose "undue hardship" on the business. 

As UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh explained to The Washington Post, the trucking company admitted that drivers often switched their assignments, meaning it would have been reasonable to accommodate the men's request, rather than firing them. 

The jury delivered its verdict in 45 minutes, on Oct. 20. However, the case appears to have picked up national attention when Fox News' Megyn Kelly invited the channel's legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano on air Monday, where the two criticized the government-appointed agency for cherry picking cases to serve a political agenda.

"It’s unfortunate when the government interferes in a private dispute over religious views and takes sides, and chooses one religion over another," Judge Napolitano said, responding to Ms. Kelly's accusation that the government had not provided Christians who object to workplace demands with the same protections as the Muslim truck drivers. 

Kelly specifically cited the cases of Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk briefly jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses after the Supreme Court's decision to legalize gay marriage nationwide, and private bakers' disputed rights to refuse serving gay couples. 

Critics who told Ms. Davis "If you can't do the job, don't take the job," or resign, ought to be saying the same thing to workers of other faiths, Kelly said.

According to Professor Volokh, the US Civil Rights Act "rejects" the idea that employees should just resign when their beliefs come into conflict with their responsibilities, and has often been used to protect Christians: a 2012 settlement, for example, when the EEOC represented a Jehovah's Witness fired for refusing to raise the American flag, which violated his religious views.  

However, as both liberal and conservative analysts have pointed out, under the Civil Rights Act, elected public officials are exempt from some of the law's protections, although Kentucky law restores some of those rights to elected officials like Davis. 

County clerks are asked to “certify that [couples have] met the state requirements for marriage. So her religious opposition to same-sex marriage is absolutely irrelevant in this context," Columbia law professor Katherine Franke argued on National Public Radio, contrasting Davis' personal views of marriage with the legal definition. "Couples in Kentucky are being asked to pay the price of her religious observance.”

Davis was released from jail after 5 days, and permitted to return to work, where her deputies continued to issue marriage licenses whose language had been slightly altered, but, as her lawyers argue in the ongoing case, still legal. 

But religious discrimination lawsuits, from workers of all faiths, seem unlikely to fizzle from public view any time soon.

Esquire writer Dave Holmes suggests that such lawsuits present an enticing political strategy, though for quite a different reason than what the Fox commentators allege.

When gay couples "are withheld the right to marry, they lose something real," he wrote last month. On the other hand, the way rights cases have been framed in the past, gay marriage opponents merely lose "a concept," a distinction Holmes says helped Americans accept the legalization of gay marriage. 

But once the issues are framed as workplace discrimination, he argues, something very real is at stake, that everyone can understand and appreciate regardless of creed or culture: a job. 

Amish man sues US government over photo ID requirement to purchase firearms

By Alejandro Rios  |  LancasterOnline  |  October 26, 2015

An Amish man from Northumberland County is suing the U.S. government over the identification requirement to purchase a firearm, arguing his religious beliefs prevent him from being photographed.

Andrew Hertzler, who the lawsuit says is an active and practicing member of the Amish faith community in Lancaster County, tried to purchase a firearm at a Pennsylvania firearms dealer in June using a state-issued nonphoto ID. The sale was denied.

Hertzler said he wants to purchase a firearm for self-defense purposes.

The lawsuit points to the biblical passage Exodus 20:4, which states: “You shall not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”

The lawsuit argues Hertzler could purchase firearms without photo identification by applying for a federal firearms license, which would allow him to sell, make, transfer and/or import firearms. However, it states he has “no intent to engage in the business of selling firearms.”

Hertzler reached out to U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, who contacted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

In a letter to Hertzler, Toomey said the ATF responded by saying federal laws require photo identification when purchasing a firearm, and there are no exceptions to this requirement.

Hertzler wants the court to declare the photo ID requirement — Title 18 U.S.C. § 922(t)(1)(C) — violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Second Amendment. He also wants the court to prohibit the requirement from being enforced against those who claim a religious exemption.
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch; Acting Director of the ATF Thomas E. Brandon; Assistant Director, ATF Public and Government Affairs Christopher C. Shaefer; and FBI Director James B. Comey are also named as defendants in the lawsuit.

The suit was filed Friday in U.S. Middle District Court.

Should the U.S. government make an exception based on a person's religious beliefs to the law requiring someone to have a photo ID to purchase a firearm? Take our poll, and leave your comments below.

Free speech is flunking out on college campuses

By Catherine Rampell  |  The Washington Post  |  October 22, 2015

Women, sexual assault victims, people of color, transgender students. College campuses have created “safe spaces” for all sorts of marginalized groups. But in the process, one member of the campus community has lost precious real estate.

Free speech.

There have of course been complaints about censorship and political correctness on the nation’s campuses for a while now. High-profile speakers — Christine Lagarde, Condoleezza Rice — have been disinvited from or otherwise pushed out of commencement addresses, thanks to students who didn’t want to hear what they had to say. Comedians have sworn off performing at colleges because they say students can’t take a joke.

Even President Obama has decried illiberal tendencies in liberal arts settings, fretting that college students are “coddled and protected from different points of view.”

These threats to free speech peaked this week at Wesleyan University, a top-flight school in Middletown, Conn., where the student government voted to cut funding for the 150-year-old campus newspaper after it published a conservative op-ed.

In September, sophomore Bryan Stascavage — a 30-year-old Iraq veteran and self-described “moderate conservative” — wrote an opinion column for the Wesleyan Argus, the student newspaper. In it, he criticized the Black Lives Matter movement — not the movement’s mission or motivations, but its tactics and messaging, particularly those of its more anti-cop fringe elements.

The essay was provocative, but it contained neither name-calling nor racial stereotypes (the usual hallmarks of collegiate column calumny). It was no more radical than the conservative commentary you might see on mainstream op-ed pages such as this one.

That didn’t stop all hell from breaking loose.

'Bureaucracy run amok': School dumps federal lunch program, is deemed 'processing plant'

By FoxNews.com  |  October 21, 2015

Nathan Greenberg believes he runs a school district, but government bureaucrats look at his Londonderry, N.H., operation and see …. a food processing plant?

That’s the strange dilemma the 5,000-student district finds itself in after deciding at the end of the last school year to pull the high school out of the unpopular National School Lunch Program. While the district’s elementary and middle schools remain in the program, which sets portion and nutrition guidelines for students, provides low cost staples and subsidizes meals of low-income pupils, it proved immensely unpopular at the high school.

“We saw the [federally-mandated] food going right into the garbage,” said Greenberg. “We had some of the healthiest trash cans in the state of New Hampshire.”

“We saw the [federally-mandated] food going right into the garbage. We had some of the healthiest trash cans in the state of New Hampshire.”
- Nathan Greenberg, superintendent of schools

Before the current school year began in the town of 24,000 neighboring Manchester, the district decided to pull the older students out of the program. Doing so gave officials flexibility in what meals they offered and how they were prepared. The high school now has a new snack room, a coffee bar and a frozen-yogurt machine, and a salad bar is set to open next month. Participation in the school lunch program rose from 29 percent to 33 percent, according to officials.

Greenberg’s goal was not to provide a less healthy menu, but to provide more choices and ensure the food was actually consumed.

“We knew full well that in doing so, we would have to pick up the tab for the [high school] kids who got free and reduced-price lunches,” Greenberg said. “We were okay with that.

“We were able to offer nutritious lunches with greater variety,” he continued. “We have seen greater participation and enthusiasm, as well as significantly less waste.”

But the problem arose when U.S. Department of Agriculture officials, and the state agency that shares oversight of the program, realized that nearly all of the district’s food is taken in, stored and prepared at the facility at the high school. That means food destined for the one middle and four elementary schools, which is subsidized by taxpayers, could be co-mingled with food that is not. It also means the high school – but not the other schools in the district – would forgo foods the USDA provides at low prices, including cheese, diced chicken and peaches.

Obama’s effort to ‘nudge’ America

By Danny Vinik  |  Politico  |  

The government tried using behavioral science to shape people’s behavior. Here’s what happened.

For the past year, the Obama administration has been running an experiment: Is it possible to make policy more effective by using psychology on citizens?

The nickname is “nudging”—the idea that policymakers can change people’s behavior just by presenting choices or information differently. The classic example is requiring people to opt out of being an organ donor, instead of opting in, when they sign up for a driver’s license. Without any change in rules, the small tweak has boosted the number of registered organ donors in many states.

Nudging has gained a lot of high-profile advocates, including behavioral-law guru Cass Sunstein and former budget czar Peter Orszag. Not everyone likes the idea—“the behaviorists are saying that you, consumer, are stupid,” said Bill Shughart, a professor of public choice at Utah State University—but President Obama was intrigued enough that he actually hired Sunstein, a law professor at Harvard who co-wrote the best-known book about the topic, “Nudge.”

The president officially adopted the idea last year when he launched the White House’s Social and Behavioral Science Team (SBST), a cross-agency effort to bring behavioral science research into the policymaking process. Now the team has published its first annual report on this experiment.

How did it go? Mostly, the efforts appear to have worked, though it’s hard to know how much impact they’ll have. In part this is because the SBST’s efforts are small—just 15 proof-of-concept projects in its first year—and limited by agencies and laws in how bold they could be. Nevertheless, the findings produce a few key insights:

1. Young people clearly respond to texts

One problem the team tried to address is an education issue called “summer melt”—the fact that each year, 20 to 30 percent of high school graduates who’ve been accepted to college just don’t matriculate for their freshman year. Most of them are poor, the kind of students who would really benefit from a college degree. The Department of Education and the SBST partnered with a nonprofit organization to send text messages to selected students, reminding them to complete certain required tasks before showing up on campus, like filling out forms. The results: about 9 percent more poor students matriculated.

2. You can make federal vendors more honest with a simple reminder

On certain transactions, federal vendors are required to pay a fee on quarterly sales, which they self-report through an online form. To improve honest reporting, the General Services Administration—the agency that manages the function of different agencies—added a small prompt to the top of the form asking vendors to promise they were submitting accurate information. Lying on the prompt has no legal repercussions, but it still led to a $1.59 million increase in fees in one quarter, suggesting that the respondents were more fully reporting their sales.

Good News: Obama's Global Warming Campaign To Cost $45 Billion A Year In Regulatory Costs

By Matt Vespa | Townhall.com | October 30, 2015

When the United Nation’s conference on global warming begins in Paris come December, American Action Forum has a friendly reminder: we already regulate greenhouse gases and the Obama administration’s regulatory cost in fighting so-called climate change could cost us $45 billion annually:

…[R]egulators have already imposed $26 billion in annual costs to limit GHGs and 

have proposed an additional $1.7 billion. However, to meet President Obama’s 

climate goals the nation will have to spend up to $45 billion more each year by 2025.

What are the benefits of these investments? According to the Environmental 

Protection Agency (EPA) estimates, previous actions will avert a combined 

0.0573 degrees Celsius of warming. Meeting the president’s 2025 goals 

could add reductions up to 0.125 degree Celsius. In other words, full 

achievement of the president’s climate goals will cost more than $73 billion in 

annual burdens to alleviate less than two-tenths of one degree of warming.

Of course, the president’s Clean Power Plan is factored into all of this, which aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. Already we have studies showing that it will disproportionately impact fixed-income seniors, and most of rural America. Moreover, everyone knows it will increase energy costs. Secretary of State John Kerry is working to make sure the U.S. leaves Paris with something that isn’t a treaty since there’s a slim chance of getting it through a Republican Congress. The administration’s Clean Power Plan already has over half the states opposing it. Both Democratic and Republican attorneys general have joined a lawsuit against the president’s agenda. As of now, states have until September 6, 2016 to submit their blueprints that balances their energy needs with CPP’s goals. Those who fail to submit one will have a federal plan imposed until a state-centered strategy is drafted. Like Obamacare, we have another serious policy fight ahead, one that isn’t being discussed much on the 2016 campaign trail.

The Slow-Motion Implosion of ObamaCare

By Andy Puzder | The Wall Street Journal | November 1, 2015

I see firsthand in my company why not enough people are signing up and premiums are rising.

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell announced recently that she expects 10 million people to be enrolled in health-care coverage through ObamaCare’s exchanges by the end of next year. What she didn’t mention was that in March of last year the Congressional Budget Office predicted that 21 million people would be enrolled in 2016—more than double the new estimate.

The administration says the difference can be explained away: For instance, fewer companies dropped coverage than expected, thus fewer employees are migrating from employer-sponsored plans to the exchanges. “We haven’t seen much of a shift at all,”Richard Frank, a health and human services assistant secretary, told USA Today.

But the question isn’t where Americans are getting health insurance. It is whether ObamaCare will provide more Americans with affordable insurance for decades to come.

Supporters credit ObamaCare with helping nine million uninsured Americans find coverage in 2014. But a new paper from the Heritage Foundation, however, suggests that nearly all of the increase came from adding nearly nine million people to the Medicaid rolls.

In other words, ObamaCare expanded coverage in 2014 to the extent that it gave people free or nearly free insurance. That goal could have been accomplished without the Affordable Care Act. To justify its existence, ObamaCare must make affordable private insurance available to a broad cross-section of uninsured Americans who are ineligible for Medicaid.

But with fewer people buying insurance through the exchanges, the economics aren’t holding up. Ten of the 23 innovative health-insurance plans known as co-ops—established with $2.4 billion in ObamaCare loans—will be out of business by the end of 2015 because of weak balance sheets.