Chad’s Morning Brief: Texas Lottery Survives a Challenge, President Obama to Headline Planned Parenthood Event, & More

Here is your Morning Brief for the morning of April 24, 2013. Give me your feedback below and tune in to The Chad Hasty Show for these and many more topics from 8:30 to 11am.

Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images

1. Obama to Speak at Planned Parenthood Fundraiser (link)

With the country just starting to get back to normal after a terror attack and with abortion picking up more in the news, you would think that the President would want to stay far away from the issue of abortion. I guess not though. According to the Washington Times, the President will be the keynote speaker for the event on Thursday.

Amid new concerns about the brutality of illegal forms of abortions, President Obama plans to deliver the keynote address at Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s annual fundraising dinner Thursday.
The theme of the dinner, to be held in Washington, is a “Time for Care,” organizers announced. Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said Mr. Obama has done more than any president in history for women’s health and rights so she is delighted to have him help promote the gala dinner with his presence.
“He understands that access to birth control and preventive health care are economic issues for women and their families,” she said in a statement. “We fought alongside him to ensure that women’s health access was expanded in the landmark Affordable Care Act, and now we have to fight hard to ensure that the full promise of health care reform is realized for millions of women.
Abortion opponents quickly seized on the news, arguing that Mr. Obama should rescind his agreement to speak or even attend the dinner, considering the gruesome revelations emanating from the trial of Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell.
“These accounts by former clinic staff have shell-shocked the nation, and it is incumbent upon the president to reconsider his support for the abortion industry and Planned Parenthood, which last year profited from abortion $87 million committing over 300,000 abortions,” said Lila Rose, who heads Live Action, an anti-abortion group.
In announcing Mr. Obama as speaker, Planned Parenthood, focused their praise on his work helping women gain greater access to contraception. Mr. Obama’s new health care law included a new mandate requiring most U.S. employers — including religiously affiliated hospitals and schools — to provide health care plans that cover contraceptive services for female employees free of charge.
The abortion-rights community and Mr. Obama hailed the guidelines, first proposed in August 2011. But the Catholic Church and other religious organizations, which oppose some forms of contraception, tried to lobby for a clear exemption of affiliated institutions from the new rules. Earlier this year, the Obama administration updated its regulations in a compromise that would give women who work for religious employers access to no-cost birth control but would force insurers, not the religious organizations, to pay for it.

You know for all the talk the President does about protecting innocent life, isn't it a little odd that he keynotes for the organization that leads the nation in abortions?

2. Lotto (link)

It was an interesting day in Austin yesterday. Lawmakers shocked many people when they initially voted to end the Texas Lottery Commission. According to KFYO News, many lawmakers called the lottery a tax.

House Bill 2197 originally failed in a 65 to 81 vote in the Texas House Tuesday afternoon, with some lawmakers calling the Lottery a de-facto tax on poor people.

About an hour after the initial vote, members reconsidered the bill and passed it. Both Reps. Frullo and Perry voted against the measure each time.

When it comes to the Lottery, I see the issue different than most in the Republican Party. While I think it was and still is stupid to fund education by the Lottery, we are still talking about what adults should be able to do with their own money. I have no problem with the lotto or gambling. If an adult chooses to spend their last $10 bucks on scratch-offs, that is their decision. You can't protect stupid.

3. Halt Muslim Student Visas? (link)

Should the United States halt student visas to Muslim students for two years? Bob Beckel thinks so, what about you?

Fox News analyst Bob Beckel defended his comments about temporarily prohibiting Muslim students from entering the country Tuesday saying it wasn’t a position he takes lightly.
“My point is not to suggest that there’s a cell of 70,000 people here. What I’m suggesting is that those students coming from those countries where [they] harbor resentment against the United States, if we could save one Boston marathon event or one child’s life by saying we’re going to take a two-year hiatus from countries that we know do not like us and know from whence terrorism is coming,” Beckel told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly on her show.
On Monday evening’s edition of “The Five,” which Beckel co-hosts, he suggested “cutting off” Muslim students from coming into this country for some time, in response to the Boston bombing.
“I think we really have to consider, that given the fact so many people hate us, we’re going to have to cut off Muslim students from coming to this country for some period of time so that we can at least absorb what we got, look at what we’ve got and decide whether some of the people here should be sent back home or sent to prison,” Beckel said Monday.
His comments garnered a lot of backlash and he admitted that the suggestion was unfair in many ways.
Beckel told Kelly he wasn’t suggesting sending home Muslim students who were already here, or have already been accepted for the September semester, but did say that the student visas was one of the easiest ways to get into the U.S. and that matter had to be addressed.
“There are 75,000 Muslim students on visas in this country. A student visa is easiest thing to get. One of people in 9/11 was on a student visa, and there have been others on student visas,” he said. “How many of those have been looked at very carefully? That is one of problems. We can say only a few have gotten in on student visas but we have a lot of students here who may themselves harbor some feelings [of] resentment toward the United States. They come from countries where they are frankly brainwashed about the United States from the beginning. Their leaders don’t like the United States.”

Thoughts?

Other Top Stories:

Internet Sales Tax

Rick Perry on 2012

House GOP: Clinton Blew Benghazi Response

Administration Accused of Inventing Crisis to Cause Air Delays

Report: Boston Terrorist Confesses

Mosque Contacted FBI to Identify Bombing Suspects