Chad’s Morning Brief: Ted Cruz and Paul Sadler Debate Tonight, DOJ Domestic Surveillance Increases Under President Obama, & More
Here is your Morning Brief for the morning of October 2, 2012. Give us your feedback below and tune in to The Chad Hasty Show for these and many more topics from 8:30 to 11 am.
1. U.S. Senate Debate (link)
Tonight will be the first debate between Ted Cruz and Paul Sadler in Dallas. The debate for U.S. Senate will be an hour-long back and forth between the two candidates. According to the Texas Tribune:
Tuesday’s debate, hosted by Belo, will feature questioning from WFAA-TV news reporter Brad Watson and Dallas Morning News reporter Gromer Jeffers Jr. Cruz and Sadler will also have a chance to question each other.
Libertarian John Jay Myers and Green Party candidate David B. Collins are also running for the open U.S. Senate seat. Neither was invited to the WFAA debate. Myers has filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission over his exclusion from the debate.
The debate will air live at 7 p.m. on ABC affiliates WFAA in Dallas and KVUE-TV in Austin and on Texas Cable News. It will also stream live on dallasnews.com. Various Belo-owned stations and some PBS stations plan to air the debate afterward.
Both candidates have also agreed to a second televised debate on Oct. 19 hosted by Dallas-area PBS affiliate KERA-TV. The Texas Tribune is a partner in that event.
We haven't heard much from Cruz lately when it comes to the U.S. Senate race since he has spent some time trying to help out Mitt Romney, so it will be good to hear him debate Sadler. All polls show that Sadler is down in the polls and in all reality, he has no chance but the two still need debates and people still need to get out to vote.
2. Surveillance Increasing (link)
Remember when the left slammed President Bush over domestic surveillance of Americans? According to the ACLU, the use of surveillance under President Obama has skyrocketed.
Documents obtained by the ACLU through a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that under President Obama between 2009 and 2011, warrantless electronic surveillance requests by the Justice Department to spy on phone communications increased 60 percent from 23,535 to 37,616.
The number of people whose phone calls were subject to such surveillance during that same time period tripled.
Phone numbers called and received, emails sent and received, and other Internet communications were all monitored by the federal government via “pen register” and “trap and trace devices” — systems that measure the data, not the content, about the communication.
Such techniques are different from wiretaps, which monitor the content of communications.
More people were subjected to federal government pen register and trap and trace surveillance of their phones in the past two years than in the previous decade.
DOJ surveillance of Internet communications, while rarer, increased 361 percent between 2009 and 2011.
Thoughts?
3. Cheerleaders Head to Court (link)
Today on The Chad Hasty Show we will speak with Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott about a few different issues. One of those issues will be about a Texas high school cheerleading squad that will be heading to court to fight to continue using biblical verses on banners during football games. According to the WSJ:
The Kountze, Texas, schools superintendent banned the signs two weeks ago after he was contacted by the Freedom from Religion Foundation in Madison, Wis., which said it had received a citizen complaint.
A state district court judge in Hardin County issued a temporary restraining order lifting the ban after the Liberty Institute, a Plano, Texas, group promoting religious freedom, offered to represent the cheerleaders and asked the court to issue a permanent injunction. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday in Kountze, a town of 2,100 about 85 miles northeast of Houston.
The 18 varsity cheerleaders at Kountze High School displayed the paper banners at three games before Kevin Weldon, superintendent of the Kountze Independent School District, stopped the practice.
One banner read: "But thanks be to God, which gives us Victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Cor. 15:57." Another, from the Epistle of Paul to the Philippians in the New Testament, read, "I can do all things through Christ, which strengthens me."
The Kountze Lions football team, which is undefeated through four games this season, would crash through the banners as it took the field.
Beth Richardson, the cheerleading coach, who works as a counselor at Kountze Middle School, said the girls got the idea for the banners from the social media site Pinterest, where they saw similar signs created by students at Georgia's Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe High School in 2009. The Georgia school's district banned the banners following complaints.
Last week, Abbott sent the district a letter expressing his support for their freedom of speech. Abbott will join us at 10:05am today.
4. Internet Mental-Illness (link)
Are you addicted to the internet? If so, you might have a mental illness.
Think twice the next time you play a videogame or surf the Net: ‘Internet-use disorder’ is set to be added to the list of mental illnesses in the worldwide psychiatric manual. Kids are identified as being especially at risk.
The international mental health encyclopedia known as the ‘Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders’ (DSM-IV) will include Internet-use disorder as a condition “recommended for further study” in its forthcoming May 2013 edition.
Psychologists believe that Internet addiction should be categorized like other addiction disorders as it has similar symptoms, including emotional shutdown, lack of concentration and withdrawal.
Parents have noted their children becoming angry and violent when their electronic gadgets are taken away from them, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. In other instances, kids preferred to play a videogame over eating or social interaction.
For more information just google the story, or don't because it might just make you mentally-ill.
Other Top Stories:
These and many more topics coming up on today’s edition of The Chad Hasty Show. Tune in mornings 8:30-11 am on NewsTalk 790 KFYO, streaming online at kfyo.com, and now on your iPhone and Android device with the radioPup App. All guest interviews can be heard online in our podcast section after the show at kfyo.com.
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