The Patriots

by Joe Saunders

Florida’s Broward County had already become a byword for deadly incompetence even before a newspaper report last week detailed the school board’s failures to deal with the teenager who eventually killed 17 students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February in Parkland.

Now, it’s making another reputation, as the home of a school district willing to go to court to punish a newspaper that revealed the truth.

According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the Broward County School Board is asking a judge to hold the newspaper in contempt after it published a damning story last week that showed just how badly the school district had failed to handle the case of Nikolas Cruz, the troubled teenager who turned into a mass killer.

The Sun-Sentinel’s article published Saturday was based on a Tallahassee-based consultant’s report the Broward School Board tried mightily to suppress.

However, it finally released a heavily redacted version of the report on Friday under a court order. About two-thirds of the document was supposed to be kept from the public by being blacked out. The problem for the school board was the redactions disappeared when the report was copied and pasted into another software.

That let the Sun-Sentinel reporters read the entire report – and let their readers know what the black-out version of the report kept hidden: That Cruz, who had been a student at Stoneman Douglas before transferring to an alternative school, had not been offered all available options for special education opportunities in the district; and that he was not able to attend the alternative school he wanted thanks in part to Stoneman Douglas administrators.

It also showed that School Superintendent Robert Runcie was misleading the public when he claimed that Cruz had refused special education options the district offered.

As the Sun-Sentinel reported:

“In the past, Runcie said that when Cruz turned 18 and rejected special education placement, the district could no longer provide him with the services given to students with emotional and behavioral disabilities. But the consultant’s report reveals for the first time that Cruz himself requested to return to special education, and his request went nowhere.”

Now, there’s no way of knowing whether anything the school district did could have prevented the February shooting. And no one is responsible for the crimes Cruz committed but Cruz himself. Now 19, he is charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder.

But the facts are that the school district essentially blew it when it came to the case of a deeply troubled teenager, then tried to keep the facts from the public – officially to protect the student’s privacy, of course. The concealment just happened to have another effect.

As the Sun-Sentinel put it: “The redactions removed specifics of the killer’s history in the school system — and in the process removed details of mistakes the district made in handling him.”

The Parkland shooting unleashed a wave of gun-control hysteria, led by the media and touted by the voluble David Hogg and other student “survivors,” who’ve been using the crime as a means of political activism and personal celebrity for eight months now.

But the Sun-Sentinel report – like earlier reports about the Broward County Sheriff’s Office – shows the failure of Democrat-dominated local government to deal with a potential problem before it became a tragedy.

And now the school board is going to court against a newspaper that revealed the truth?

In a time when liberals throughout the land are accusing President Donald Trump and his administration of being at war with the idea of a “free press,” nothing can show how hollow the liberals’ claims are than a school board in a Democrat-dominated county suing a newspaper for revealing the truth about government incompetence.

Broward County has really made a name for itself.

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submitted by LeRoy C

On Friday, the Trump administration released their annual report to Congress on White House Office Personnel.  It includes the name, status, salary and position title of all 377 White House employees.

The report also said that Trump decided not to take a dime of his salary; instead he donated it to an amazing cause! See below.
 
The report also showed that President Trump is far better at saving money than Obama was. The total annual White House salaries under Trump are 35.8 million vs. $40.9 million under Obama, a savings of $5.1 million.  Here are some other key findings:
 
There are 110 fewer employees on White House staff under Trump than under Obama at this point in their respective presidencies.
 
Nineteen fewer staffers are also dedicated to The First Lady of the United States (FLOTUS).  Currently, there are only two staffers dedicated to Melania Trump vs. 22 staffers who served Michelle Obama (FY2009).
 
However, it's what the report said Trump did with this salary that has everyone talking.
 
Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it will be used for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries!  AMAZING! It's so great to have a President who loves our brave military men and women so much!
 
Oh, and where's the media coverage of this? That's right, they don't cover anything decent that the President does...

by Nick Givas

{This is the kind of healthcare you can expect under socialized medicine. It's cost controls and lack of accountability ensure that its just a matter of time before other surgery such as removal of an appendix or gall bladder is done without anesthetic. Five million in punitive damages may not be enough. - ED}

Mota and her husband filed a lawsuit on July 13 and it was first obtained by NBC 7.

They claimed the problem began when Mota’s blood pressure began to drop. Three minutes after her blood pressure started falling, Mota’s doctor ordered an emergency C-section.

The anesthesiologist on call, Dr. David Seif, was paged several times to assist with the procedure but “did not respond,” according to the lawsuit. After waiting for almost ten minutes, they strapped Mota to the operating table and cut her open.

Mota’s fiance and the father of her daughter, Paul Iheanachor, told NBC 7 he could hear his future wife screaming, before she mercifully passed out.

Iheanachor claims he tried to enter the operating room to comfort Mota, “but was held back by several hospital personnel.”

“If somebody put a knife in your stomach and cut you open, and had their hands on your insides, and ripped your baby out, you know. I just tried to put myself in her shoes,” Iheanachor told NBC 7. “Just tried to wrap my mind around how it would feel to basically be gutted like a fish.”

Aaron Byzak, the chief government and external affairs officer for Tri-City Medical Center, provided a statement to NBC 7, contradicting Mota’s version of events. He said:

Patient safety and quality are the utmost priorities for Tri-City Medical Center and all of our partners. While we normally don’t comment on pending litigation, the patient’s public discussion of the care she received during her emergency C-section compels us to address this outrageous allegation. The patient was administered anesthesia prior to the surgery. We are pleased that the baby is “healthy” and “happy.”

“I was crying because I was scared, I didn’t know what was going on. I was laying there and [obstetrician Dr. Sandra Lopez] was like, ‘We have to just do it,’” Mota told People magazine.

Iheanachor said the hospital tried to “smooth it over” by buying them off with a $25 gift card to the gift shop. “They said, ‘Sorry for what happened, here’s a gift certificate.’ I feel like it was damage control. We were just in shock,” he said.

The baby was born without complications, but Mota says she’s been scared from the experience.

“I still don’t feel like myself. It’s something traumatic. I’m scared now to have another baby,” Mota told People.

Mota and Iheanachor are seeking up to $5 million in damages.

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by Micaiah Bilger

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The Trump administration is fighting back against lawsuits challenging its efforts to defund the abortion giant Planned Parenthood.

This week, attorneys for the government asked federal judges to dismiss two lawsuits the abortion chain filed against changes to Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) program grants, Reuters reports.

In June, Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit challenging a Department of Health and Human Services decision to prioritize sexual risk avoidance programs instead of the abortion giant’s risky sex education programs.

The Trump administration also cut millions of dollars in TPP program grants to the abortion chain in 2017 after evidence showed the program was not effective. However, the abortion chain is suing to stop those cuts as well in a separate lawsuit.

Lawyers for HHS argued this week that Planned Parenthood chose not to apply for the grants under the new changes so it does not have standing to sue, according to the report.

The Daily Caller reports more:

HHS lawyers countered that the new criteria for awarding grants under the program, which they changed in May, was “reasonable” and consistent with HHS’s past practices and congressional intent. Under the new criteria, recipients for grants must either follow a “sexual risk reduction model” or a “sexual risk avoidance model,” which aim to curb or completely stop sexual activity among teens respectively.

Planned Parenthood asserted that HHS’s new approach “stigmatizes” teens who have sex and that it prevents them from informed decision-making concerning intercourse, according to Reuters. HHS argued, however, it does not favor “sexual risk avoidance models” over “sexual risk reduction models,” and that halting grants to organizations that do follow a sexual risk avoidance model would not serve the public good, since such organizations can put those grants to “good use.”

Planned Parenthood did not comment on the development.

HHS spokesman Mark Vafiades previously told the New York Times there is very little evidence that the TPP programs were working under the Obama administration model.

Vafiades said the evidence of a positive impact is “very weak,” and the Trump administration wants to support science-based programs that provide “youth with the information and skills they need to avoid the many risks associated with teen sex.”

SIGN THE PETITION! Congress Must De-Fund Planned Parenthood Immediately

In 2017, the Office of Adolescent Health issued two reports evaluating the program. Of the 38 programs examined in the report, only one “reported a long-term reduction in overall rates of teen sexual activity. Nearly all of the evaluations found no long-term difference in sexual activity, use of contraception, or pregnancy rates between students enrolling in these programs and students in control groups,” Dr. Michael New, a professor at Ave Maria University, wrote in 2017.

HHS also pointed to research indicating that 73 percent of the TPP programs under the Obama administration either had a negative impact or none at all.

Many parents become very upset when they learn Planned Parenthood teaches their teenagers about sex. School districts in North Carolina and Michigan recently rejected Planned Parenthood sex education programs because of a strong public outcry.

Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in the United States, aborting more than 320,000 unborn babies every year. The abortion chain also teaches sex education in public schools across the country, and promotes risky sexual behavior to vulnerable young teens at its clinics.

Planned Parenthood affiliates received several million dollars in taxpayer funds through the TPP grants. Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and Hawaiian Islands received $1 million annually to target rural teens. Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho, as well as Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, also received grants of nearly $1 million each annually to promote their risky sex agenda to teens.