Graham to Obama: Let Benghazi Survivors Talk

  By Kenneth Hanner

Sen. Lindsey Graham challenged President Barack Obama to allow survivors of the deadly attack last year on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, to talk with congressional investigators without fear of being fired.

“Benghazi is eight months old, nobody has been arrested, and the survivors have never been allowed to be talked to by the Congress. This administration is investigating itself,” Graham said Wednesday in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity.

“I’m urging the president, I’m challenging this administration, allow the survivors to come forward without the fear of being fired,” said the South Carolina Republican.

Earlier this week, attorney Victoria Toensing said she had a client who wanted to share classified information with congressional investigators, but is being blocked by the State Department.

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Contraception Protest Worth Jail Time

Friday, 11 Jan 2013 11:53 AM

By Stephen Feller

Virginia’s attorney general Ken Cuccinelli said in an interview Thursday that defying the “tyranny” that is the contraception mandate in Obamacare is important enough to protest and risk going to jail over.

"My local bishop said he told a group, `Well, you know, I told a group I'm ready to go to jail,' and I told him, `Bishop, don't take this personally — you need to go to jail," the Republican gubernatorial candidate said on Steve Deace's syndicated radio show.

Cuccinelli went on to say that the requirement for health insurers to cover most forms of contraceptives for their customers is an attack on the Roman Catholic Church, which demands civil disobedience. He encouraged those who disagree with the law to protest by forcing the feds to prosecute those who don't comply.

Violating the law and going to jail for it would "provide an example of what tyranny means when it's played to its logical conclusion," according to Cuccinelli.

"Abraham Lincoln has many good quotes,” Cuccinelli said, “but one of them is ‘The best way to get rid of a bad law is to enforce it vigorously.’”

The suggestion that citizens break the law because they consider it to be an attack on their religious beliefs — Cuccinelli is Catholic, and has said as much — outraged not only pro-choice advocates, but Democrats as well.

"For Virginia's chief legal officer to suggest that citizens break the law is not only reckless, it's dangerous," Democratic state Sen. Mark Herring told Fox News.

Hollywood Won't Curb Film, Game Violence in Wake of Newtown Shooting

The motion picture industry will not press for mandatory curbs on gun violence in films in the wake of the Newtown elementary school massacre — and, in fact, is dead set against them.

“What we don't want to get involved with is content regulation. We're vehemently opposed to that,’’ former Sen. Chris Dodd, who chairs the Motion Picture Association of America, told The Hollywood Reporter. “We have a free and open society that celebrates the First Amendment."

Dodd’s declaration comes as entertainment industry leaders prepare to discuss gun violence in films and video games at a Thursday meeting to be chaired by Vice President Joe Biden at the White House Thursday.

Expected to participate are movie studio executives, National Association of Broadcasters president Gordon Smith, Directors Guild of America executive director Jay Roth and National Association of Theatre Owners CEO John Fithian.

“We want to explore what we can do to provide parents and others with the information for them to make choices on what they want to see and what they want their children to see,” Dodd told the Reporter.

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Kathy Griffin Crossed the Line on CNN

Monday, 07 Jan 2013 02:50 PM

By Bill Donohue

Perhaps the biggest story related to Kathy Griffin’s salacious stunt on CNN’s New Year’s Eve broadcast with Anderson Cooper was the almost deadening silence it engendered from any quarter.

 

Aside from Newsbusters and the Parents Television Council (thank God for Brent Bozell), and a story in the Baltimore Sun and the New York Daily News, there wasn’t much in the way of criticism (predictably, Perez Hilton took offense at the Parents Television Council for having the audacity to call out Griffin).

 

Does it matter what Griffin did? To put it more generally, does what we see and hear have any effect on our behavior, particularly the behavior of young people?

 

Hollywood obviously thinks that what we see and hear matters, otherwise it wouldn’t intentionally ban actors from smoking on television. The movies are no different. There are, of course, a few exceptions. But those exceptions do not go unanswered.

 

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 Dr. William Donohue is the president of and CEO of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization. The publisher of the Catholic League journal, Catalyst, Bill is a former Bradley Resident Scholar at the Heritage Foundation and served for two decades on the board of directors of the National Association of Scholars. The author of five books, two on the ACLU, and the winner of several teaching awards and many awards from the Catholic community, Donohue has appeared on thousands of television and radio shows speaking on civil liberties and social issues.