Obama Against Abortion Language In Health Care Bill

White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod suggested Sunday that President Obama will intervene to make sure a controversial amendment restricting federal funding for abortion coverage is stripped from final health care reform legislation.

In doing so, the president would be heeding the call of abortion rights supporters like Planned Parenthood that have called the White House their “strongest weapon” in keeping such restrictions out of the bill.

The abortion amendment was tacked on to the House health care bill and was a key factor in securing the votes of moderate Democrats before the bill was approved by a narrow margin last weekend. The amendment, authored by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., went beyond preventing the proposed government-run plan from covering abortion to restrict federal subsidies from going toward private plans that offer abortion coverage.

Axelrod said in an interview Sunday that the amendment changes the “status quo,” something the president cannot abide.

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White House To Fly Red Chinese Flag

The administration of President Barack Obama, whose official blogger while Obama was a candidate came under attack for hanging a Communist Party flag in his Harvard apartment, apparently has given permission to raise the emblem of Communist China over the south lawn of the White House.

The plan, reported by several English-language Chinese media outlets, has raised concern among those who are working to guard the United States from outside influences that could be threats.

According to the Global Times English-language edition, the national flag of the communist People’s Republic of China on Sept. 20 will be raised for the first time on the White House’s south lawn – a secured area seldom available for public events – in recognition of the Chinese anniversary.

“The ceremony has gotten official approval,” Xiao Shuigen, secretary of the Union of Chinese American Professional Organizations, told the Times.

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On Facebook, MySpace? White House Has Got Your Email

The White House is hiring a contractor to harvest information about Americans from its pages on social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.

The National Legal and Policy Center, or NLPC, revealed the White House New Media team is seeking to hire a technology vendor to collect data such as comments, tag lines, e-mail, audio and video from any place where the White House “maintains a presence” – for a period of up to eight years.

“The contractor shall provide the necessary services to capture, store, extract to approved formats, and transfer content published by EOP Executive Office of the President on publicly-accessible web sites, along with information posted by non-EOP persons on publicly-accessible web sites where the EOP offices under PRA Presidential Records Act maintains a presence,” the posting states.

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White House Requests ‘Fishy’ Information From Citizens

The White House is under fire for a blog post asking supporters to send “fishy” information received through rumors, chain e-mails and casual conversations to a White House e-mail address, flag@whitehouse.gov. Conservatives have pounced on the request, accusing the White House of acting Orwellian.

“If you get an e-mail from your neighbor and it doesn’t sound right, send it to the White House?”said Sen. John Barasso, R-Wyo. ” People, I think all across America are going to say is this 1984? What is happening here? Is big brother watching?”

Radio host Rush Limbaugh accused the White House of using heavy-handed tactics.

“They’re looking for tattletales,”he said. “They’re looking for snitches. They’re looking for informants.”

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, charged the White House with compiling an “enemies list.”In a letter to the president, Cornyn urged Obama to provide Congress with more details on what the White House plans to do with anyone reported for “fishy”speech.

“I am not aware of any precedent for a president asking American citizens to report their fellow citizens to the White House for pure political speech that is deemed ‘fishy’ or otherwise inimical to the White House’s political interests,”he wrote.

“You should not be surprised that these actions taken by your White House staff raise the specter of a data collection program. As Congress debates health care reform and other critical policy matters, citizen engagement must not be chilled by fear of government monitoring the exercise of free speech rights,”he wrote.

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Georgetown Covered Name of Jesus to Comply With White House Request

Georgetown University says it covered over the monogram “IHS”–symbolizing the name of Jesus Christ—because it was inscribed on a pediment on the stage where President Obama spoke at the university on Tuesday and the White House had asked Georgetown to cover up all signs and symbols there.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the “IHS” monogram that had previously adorned the stage at Georgetown’s Gaston Hall was still covered up–when the pediment where it had appeared was photographed by CNSNews.com.

“In coordinating the logistical arrangements for yesterday’s event, Georgetown honored the White House staff’s request to cover all of the Georgetown University signage and symbols behind Gaston Hall stage,” Julie Green Bataille, associate vice president for communications at Georgetown.

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Vatican Blocked Caroline Kennedy Appointment

Vatican sources told Il Giornale that their support for abortion disqualified Ms Kennedy and other Roman Catholics President Barack Obama had been seeking to appoint.

Mr Obama was reportedly seeking to reward John F Kennedy’s daughter, who publicly gave her support to his election bid. She had been poised to replace Hillary Clinton as New York senator, but dropped out amid criticism that she lacked enough experience for the job.

The Italian paper said that the Vatican strongly disapproved of Mr Obama’s support for abortion and stem cell research. The impasse over the ambassadorial appointment threatens to cloud his meeting with the Pope during a G8 summit in Itay in July.

Ms Kennedy, 53, has said that she supports abortion. Raymond Flynn, a former US ambassador to the Vatican, said earlier this week that Ms Kennedy would be a poor choice.

“It’s imperative, it’s essential that the person who represents us to the Holy See be a person who has pro-life values. I hope the President doesn’t make that mistake,” he told the Boston Herald. “She said she was pro-choice. I don’t assume she’s going to change that, which is problematic.”

The White House refused to comment.

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Bill May Give President Control Of The Internet

A pair of bills introduced in the U.S. Senate would grant the White House sweeping new powers to access private online data, regulate the cybersecurity industry and even shut down Internet traffic during a declared “cyber emergency.”

Senate bills No. 773 and 778, introduced by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., are both part of what’s being called the Cybersecurity Act of 2009, which would create a new Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor, reportable directly to the president and charged with defending the country from cyber attack.

A working draft of the legislation obtained by an Internet privacy group also spells out plans to grant the Secretary of Commerce access to all privately owned information networks deemed to be critical to the nation’s infrastructure “without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule or policy restricting such access.”

Privacy advocates and Internet experts have been quick to sound the alarm over the act’s broadly drawn government powers.

“The cybersecurity threat is real,” says Leslie Harris, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, which obtained the draft of S.773, “but such a drastic federal intervention in private communications technology and networks could harm both security and privacy.”

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Fairness Doctrine Seen As Threat To Christian Radio

NRB President Frank Wright said he sees the Fairness Doctrine as a credible threat under a Democrat-dominated Congress and with President Obama in the White House.

“And we have a personal concern,” Wright told Broadcasting & Cable. “The only radio station that ever lost its license under the fairness doctrine regime was a Christian radio station in Red Lion, Pa. We are only responding now to the statements the Democrats themselves are making.”

Representing 1,400 organizations, including large ministries and TV and radio stations, NRB said it is “girding itself for a major battle over broadcasting freedoms,” and was prepared to go to court, lobby Congress, or take its message to the public.

“We have talked before about many of these issues, but now, with the shift in the political landscape, I think these same things have a much higher probability of being enacted or at least having legislation and hearings and debates, and on the regulation side at the FCC,” said Wright.

He said the new political climate doesn’t just threaten broadcasters, but even churches that have no broadcast outlet.

“The fairness doctrine has a tremendous potential for constraining free speech, but hate crimes (legislation) has the potential of criminalizing it,” he said. “In the short run, the fairness doctrine has the immediate threat of being applied to Christian broadcasters and to the church in a very deleterious way. Hate crimes legislation, if that is enacted, will evolve over time and bleed over into speech and have a negative effect, but not right away. The fairness doctrine will have a negative impact the day it is implemented.”

He said he expects religious broadcasters, largely Christian, to be particularly hard hit because of the doctrine’s requirement for so-called “balance.” If an opposing view must be found for every matter of controversy, Christian broadcasters could find themselves in the unenviable and untenable position of seeking out other religious viewpoints – Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist or atheist – to counter what ministers of the Gospel say on the air.

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Uncertain Times for US Religious Right

As the dust settles on Washington following the Barack Obama earthquake, one group more than any other is expecting to be out in the cold.

For the past eight years, the so-called Religious Right has enjoyed a warm reception at the centre of White House policy-making, and with the Republican coalition on Capitol Hill.

Mainly white, “born again” evangelical Protestants, who adhere to a literal interpretation of the Bible – and oppose abortion rights above all – the Religious Right comprise around 40% of the Republican Party’s support.

“The Republican Party as it exists today could not exist without the Christian evangelical vote and the conservative Catholic vote,” said Allen Hertzke, visiting senior fellow at the influential Pew Forum on Religion and Politics.

“Now the Republican Party can’t win with them alone – as we’ve learned.”

Although there is always a tension between the narrow social agenda of Christian conservatives and the broader, more pragmatic “low tax” wing of the party, the strong US economy kept that argument at bay – until this year’s financial crisis.

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