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Washington Times reports Tea party leaders said Thursday they aren’t to blame for the debt limit increase that Republican leaders helped approve this week, saying the GOP’s problem isn’t divisions in the ranks but lack of spine at the top.


The split between tea party groups and Republican leaders — House Speaker John A. Boehnerand Senate
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell— has never appeared deeper than it does this week, after the two men provided the key support that passed a 13-month debt increase with no strings attached, delivering a major victory to Democrats.

“Quite frankly, we just tune them out,” said Amy Kremer, head of Tea PartyExpress. “They have no spine and they will not fight for anything.”

The debt has always been a tough vote for Republicans, but in previous fights they’d been able to unify on at least some concessions they attached to increases in the debt limit. This time around, they weren’t able to unite — some tea party Republicans said they couldn’t accept any debt increase, while others disagreed over what conditions to offer.
That left GOPleaders with no negotiating position, and they acquiesced to Democrats’ demand for a “clean” increase.

“It’s the fact that we don’t have 218 votes,” Mr. Boehnersaid ahead of the vote, explaining his surrender. “And when you don’t have 218 votes, you have nothing. We’ve seen that before, and we’ll see it again.”

But Judson Phillips, a leader of Tea Party Nation, said Mr. Boehner has frittered away numerous opportunities to go to war for conservative principles.
“Boehnerdoes not want to fight,” Mr. Phillips said. “He has never wanted to fight. He started from the weakest possible position and then when someone pointed that out he acted like a petulant child and said, ‘Fine, I’ll just give up.’ And he did.”

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Daily Callerreports a pair of Republican senators is looking to prevent the federal government from imposing conflicting definitions of marriage on the states.

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz introduced a bill Wednesday to ensure that the 33 states that adhere to the traditional definition of marriage receive the same level of regard as the 17 states that recognize same-sex marriage. Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee has co-sponsored the legislation.

According to Cruz and Lee, the Obama administration has been attempting to redefine marriage at the federal level and undermining states’ rights to define marriage in accordance with the desires of their citizens.

“The Obama Administration should not be trying to force gay marriage on all 50 states,” Cruz said in a statement Thursday. “We should respect the states, and the definition of marriage should be left to democratically elected legislatures, not dictated from Washington. This bill will safeguard the ability of states to preserve traditional marriage for its residents.” (RELATED: Supreme Court puts hold on gay marriages in Utah)

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Denying services to same-sex couples may soon become legal in Kansas.

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Such a law may seem unnecessary in a state where same-sex marriage is banned, but some Kansas lawmakers think different.

They want to prevent religious individuals and organizations from getting sued, or otherwise punished, for not providing goods or services to gay couples -- or for not recognizing their marriages or committed relationship as valid.

This includes employees of the state.

"Kansans across the state are rightly appalled that legislators are spending their efforts to pass yet another piece of legislation that seeks to enshrine discrimination against gay and lesbian people into law," state chairwoman Sandra Meade said.

"HB 2453 is a blatant attempt to maintain second-class citizen status for taxpaying gay and lesbian Kansans."

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Republicans dominate the state's Senate and Gov. Sam Brownback is a conservative Christian known for taking a public stand against same-sex marriage.

Brownback has already praised the bill in an interview with a local newspaper.

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... titled "An act concerning religious freedoms with respect to marriage" and covers many bases.

It reads, in part: "No individual or religious entity shall be required by any governmental entity to do any of the following, if it would be contrary to the sincerely held religious beliefs of the individual or religious entity regarding sex or gender:

"Provide any services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or privileges; provide counseling, adoption, foster care and other social services; or provide employment or employment benefits, related to, or related to the celebration of, any marriage, domestic partnership, civil union or similar arrangement."

Anyone who turns away a gay couple not only can't face a civil suit, but if anyone tries to sue, they could get nailed with the other side's legal fees.

The Ray Story report a Cincinnati-area special education teacher duct-taped one student to a chair and forced another to crawl to the bathroom after taking away her walker, according to a lawsuit filed last month by five students and their parents.


A former employee at Columbia Elementary confirmed those claims Thursday on a radio appearance on WLW-AM, saying that former teacher Amanda Kitcho screamed at students in the overcrowded classroom and took away their lunches.

The suit claims Kitcho, who has resigned, intentionally provoked and startled the handicapped children into escalating behavior, threw their possessions into the trash, lied to them, and kept them walled in behind dividers.

Kitcho told one student, who suffers from congenital disorders of glycosylation and cerebellar hypoplasia, she hated her and took away her walker.
“An aide in Kitcho’s classroom reported that Kitcho stated, with respect to [the student] that, ‘She’s crawling around. I’m not putting her in that damn thing every time she’s got to move from center to center. She can crawl,’” the suit claims.

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CBS Newsreports  a pregnant woman died Thursday after she was struck by a private snowplow in New York City, but doctors were able to save her baby, CB

The incident happened in a shopping market parking lot in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn around 10:45 a.m.

The 36-year-old woman, identified by police as Min Lin, who was eight months pregnant, had just finished shopping with her husband and was loading groceries into the back of their car when she was struck.

According to police, the bobcat plow was being driven in reverse by a 42-year-old man. The driver remained at the scene, police said.

Lin was rushed to Maimonides Medical Center, where doctors performed an emergency Caesarean section, police said.

The baby boy is listed in critical but stable condition.

Lin died at the hospital. Her husband was not injured.

No arrests have been made.