Chad’s Morning Brief: National Review Endorses Ted Cruz, Planned Parenthood Battle in Texas, & More
Here is your Morning Brief for the morning of May 2, 2012. Give us your feedback below and tune in to Lubbock’s First News with Chad Hasty for these and many more topics from 6-9 am.
1. National Review Backs Cruz (link)
Tea Party favorite and rising star Ted Cruz got the endorsement of the National Review yesterday. Cruz is running for Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison's open U.S. Senate seat. In the polls, Cruz is running a strong second to Lt. Governor David Dewhurst, but has been chipping away at the lead as we get closer to the primary.
So why did the National Review pick Cruz?
To borrow a phrase from baseball, Cruz is what one might call a “five-tool” candidate: He is good on the Constitution, on the economy, on social issues, and on foreign policy, and he possesses the intellect and rhetorical gifts to combine these views into a clear, cogent, and compelling conservative vision for America. That eloquence — and the obvious biographical connection — have drawn favorable comparisons between Cruz and Marco Rubio. There is also something of Utah’s Senator Mike Lee, whom Cruz would join as a scholar, and protector, of the Constitution in the Senate. But at a certain point the comparisons don’t do justice to Cruz. It is, after all, the rare student who could draw the unalloyed admiration of professors as starkly opposed as Robert P. George and Alan Dershowitz.Cruz has earned praise as well from a diverse group of conservatives and conservative groups. Senator Lee, along with Senators Pat Toomey, Jim DeMint, and Rand Paul, have expressed their support. FreedomWorks and the Club for Growth have endorsed his campaign. George Will called him “as good as it gets” even as various tea-party groups have effused on his behalf. In a primary season marked by fiercely contested races on the right, Ted Cruz has achieved something close to consensus.
2. Planned Parenthood Battle in Texas (link)
Greg Abbott has done it again! Abbott convinced a federal appeals judge to issue a stay in the battle over Planned Parenthood in Texas and whether the state has to fund the organization. According to FOX News:
Judge Jerry Smith granted the state an emergency stay less than 24 hours after a federal judge in Austin ordered Texas not to enforce a law banning Planned Parenthood from participating in the Women's Health Program.
The order is the latest development in lawsuit over what criteria Texas can impose on a health care provider that participates in state programs for the poor.
Texas lawmakers don't want any state funding to go to clinics affiliated with abortion providers, even if they don't provide abortions and are legally separate from those that do.
Planned Parenthood has sued to stop the law, saying it violates the group's rights.
Look for this to continue to go back and forth in the courts for a while now.
3. Gingrich Ready (link)
Well it appears as though Newt Gingrich is ready to support Mitt Romney for President. In an interview with the USA Today, Gingrich will embrace Romney's campaign today and even make an official endorsement in a few weeks. According to the USA Today:
The two men will make a joint appearance in a few weeks, when Gingrich will make an official endorsement. The Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee have offered to be helpful as Gingrich works to retire his campaign debt.
In a phone interview Tuesday, Gingrich said he had no regrets about his decision to run for president, but "I have regrets about not being smarter about how to run."
Good to see Newt bow out and campaign with Romney. This should go far in healing the GOP.
4. A Story the News Doesn't Want You to Know About (link)
So, what would have happened if 100 whites would have beat up 2 black people? Would it bring media attention? Of course it would. So why isn't this story?
There’s outrage in Norfolk, Va., today after a white couple was attacked by a group of 100 black teenagers, and the local newspaper did not report on the incident for two weeks, despite the victims being employees of the paper.
Even today, the Virginian-Pilot did not cover the crime as news, but rather as an opinion piece by columnist Michelle Washington.
“Wave after wave of young men surged forward to take turns punching and kicking their victim,” Washington wrote, describing the onslaught that began when Dave Forster and Marjon Rostami stopped at a red light while driving home from a show on a Saturday night. A crowd of 100 black young people were on the sidewalk.
“Rostami locked her car door. Someone threw a rock at her window. Forster got out to confront the rock-thrower, and that’s when the beating began. …
“The victim’s friend, a young woman, tried to pull him back into his car. Attackers came after her, pulling her hair, punching her head and causing a bloody scratch to the surface of her eye. She called 911. A recording told her all lines were busy. She called again. Busy. On her third try, she got through and, hysterical, could scream only their location. Church and Brambleton. Church and Brambleton. Church and Brambleton. It happened four blocks from where they work, here at the Virginian-Pilot.”
Washington says neither suffered grave injuries, but both were out of work for a week. Forster’s torso ached from blows to his ribs, and he retained a thumb-sized bump on his head. Rostami reportedly fears to be alone in her home., while Forster wishes he’d stayed in the car.
The columnist admits the story has not, until today, appeared in the Virginian-Pilot.
5. Dumb story of the morning (link)
Stupid mother.
A New Jersey woman has been charged with felony child endangerment after she allegedly took her five-year-old daughter into a tanning booth, where the child suffered serious burns.
Patricia Krentcil, 44, was hit yesterday with a felony count approved by the Essex County Prosecutor's Office. She was arrested last week by the Nutley Township Police Department.
The investigation of Krentcil began after cops were summoned to the elementary school attended by the kindergartener, who was in pain due to what appeared to be a severe sunburn. The subsequent probe determined, cops allege, that Krentcil took her child into a tanning booth at a Nutley parlor a week prior to her April 24 arrest.
State law bars children under the age of 14 from using a tanning facility. Investigators contend that Krentcil brought her daughter into a stand-up tanning booth without the knowledge of parlor employees.
6. Good Brews Good News of the Day (link)
A quick-thinking kid.
A teen boy in Washington state was hailed Monday as a hero for pulling an 18-month-old child from the second-floor roof of an apartment building moments after his 2-year-old brother fell into a flower bed.
"That's the type of quick-thinking kid I'd like to see in the sheriff's office in 10 or 12 years," Clark County sheriff's Sgt. Fred Neiman said of 13-year-old Damon Davenport. "He sees the issue and jumps into action while others gawk."
The children were supposed to be napping in their third-floor apartment Sunday when they climbed through a damaged screen onto a roof outside the window, authorities said.
Davenport was playing football nearby when he heard one child hit the ground.
He and others ran to the child before Davenport ran upstairs to get the child's father. When they got back downstairs, the teenager noticed the new danger.
"Everybody said there's another baby up there,'" Davenport recalled. "I ran and I opened the door and opened the window and pushed out the screen and grabbed the baby boy who was two inches from the edge."
He handed the crying 18-month old to the father. The 2-year-old boy was checked at a hospital and sent home.
Everyday, Good Brews Coffee & Tea Lounge brings you the Good News of the Day!
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