Page 7 - Florida Sentinel 9-18-15 Edition

White House News
President Urges Congress To Avoid Government Shutdown Over Abortion
President Barack Obama
urged the U.S. Congress on Wednesday to avoid a govern- ment shutdown, which some conservative Republicans have been threatening if federal funding is not cut off for the women's healthcare group Planned Parenthood.
The group faces allegations, which it denies, that it im- properly sold fetal tissue after abortions. Some Republicans have said that unless funding for Planned Parenthood was stopped, they would not sup- port new spending measures needed to keep the govern- ment running after the end of the federal fiscal year in 15 days.
With only a handful of con- gressional work days remain- ing, House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner was struggling to come up with a formula that would get a fund- ing bill to President
PRESIDENT OBAMA
Obama's desk before Oct. 1, when some federal agency op- erations would have to shut down for a lack of money.
At the same time, the Re- publican leader is trying to re- spond to conservative Republican demands for pulling the plug on Planned Parenthood's federal funds, which total around $500 mil- lion a year.
President Obama is speaking out in defense of a 14-year-old Muslim boy after a teacher at his North Texas high school decided that a homemade clock he proudly brought to class looked like a bomb, according to school and police officials. “Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House?” the Presi- dent wrote on Twitter Wednesday afternoon. “We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.”
The family of Ahmed Mo- hamed said the boy was sus- pended for three days from MacArthur High School in the Dallas suburb of Irving after taking the clock to class on Monday.
The boy makes his own ra- dios, repairs his own go-kart and on Sunday spent about 20 minutes before bedtime as- sembling a clock using a cir- cuit board, power supply wired to a digital display and other items, The Dallas Morning News reported. On Monday, Ahmed showed the clock to his engineering teacher and then another teacher after the clock, which was in his backpack, beeped during class. That teacher told him that it looked like a bomb, the newspaper re-
Ahmed Mohamed was de- tained, then suspended for bringing a homemade clock to school after one of his teachers thought it resembled a bomb. (Photo: Twitter)
ported.
Ahmed was later pulled
from class and brought before the principal and Irving police officers for questioning. The school district said in a state- ment that Ahmed was de- tained by police. Irving police spokesman James McLellan said that police are determin- ing whether to file a charge of making a hoax bomb.
"He just wants to invent good things for mankind,” Ahmed’s father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, told the newspaper. “But because his name is Mohamed and because of Sept. 11, I think my son got mistreated.”
Pope Francis To Speak About Plight Of U.S. Inmates
Ben Carson Surges In National Poll
A new national poll shows retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson surging among Re- publican primary voters, run- ning nearly even with GOP frontrunner Donald Trump.
The new poll from CBS News and the New York Times shows that Carson's support has risen from just six percent last month to 23 percent now. Trump still leads the pack at 27 percent, while no other can- didate receives double-digit backing.
Carson's rise has come amid a significant slide for two other Republicans: former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
Bush, who garnered 13 per- cent of GOP primary voters in the same poll last month, is down to six percent. Walker has slid from 10 percent sup- port to just two percent in the new poll.
DR. BEN CARSON
Tied for third place with Bush at six percent are former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and Florida sena- tor Marco Rubio. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz gets five percent; for- mer HP chief Carly Fiorina has four percent support; and Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul each get the backing of three percent of GOP primary voters
Pope Francis to tour the U.S. next week. He will visit a prison in Philadelphia.
Of all the timeless and timely issues Pope Francis plans to address during his visit to the United States, there’s one that could result in an actual politi- cal “deliverable” — criminal jus- tice reform.
On a U.S. tour that begins next week, Francis is likely to bring up the subject of criminal justice reform during a speech to Con- gress — the first time a pope has addressed U.S. lawmakers in a joint meeting. The speech comes as senators are ironing out a bi- partisan compromise to reform mandatory sentencing laws that have been blamed for swelling the U.S. prison population. Ad- vocates hope Francis’ message of mercy will add moral mo- mentum and overcome a sum- mer crime wave and renewed tough-on-crime rhetoric from the GOP primary field that threatens to dampen support for the deal.
Pope Francis is also plan- ning to meet with prisoners at a penitentiary in Philadelphia. American jails currently hold 2.3 million people, a quarter of the world’s prison population — even though the U.S. represents only 5 percent of the world’s population.
“We must not let this con- tinue,” said the Rev. Maid- stone Mulenga, a United Methodist minister participat- ing in a news conference at Catholic Charities’ Washington headquarters on Friday. “That’s why I’m pleased that Pope Francis will be arriving in the United States at this time when we are tackling this problem. I’m pleased to know that he’ll be visiting one of the prisons in Philadelphia, and that he’ll be able to see for himself things as they are and how they should not continue.”
But the visit couldn’t be better timed for impact on the issue.
A bipartisan group of senators — under the lead of tough-on- crime Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) — is putting the finishing touches on a legislative package that would effectively reduce some manda- tory minimums for nonviolent drug crimes. It would also allow well-behaved prisoners who demonstrate a low risk of recidi- vism to earn time off their sen- tences.
Democratic Party Faces Pressure To Add Debates
President Obama To Detained Muslim Teen: ‘Your Clock Is Cool’
The increasingly public rift between Democratic National Committee chairwoman Deb- bie Wasserman Schultz and others in her party’s lead- ership over the number of presidential debates is threat- ening to become more than just embarrassing to the DNC.
It’s spelling trouble for Hillary Clinton, the falter- ing front-runner who can’t af- ford to look like she’s being protected by party insiders, say Democrats aligned with both the DNC and 2016 cam- paigns.
On one side of the fight is a pair of party vice chairs and 2016 candidate Martin O’Malley, who have com- plained in recent weeks that the DNC should sponsor more than its six planned debates – only four of which will take place before voting in Iowa -- and have protested the com- mittee’s vow to punish candi-
HILLARY CLINTON
dates
who try to participate in un- sanctioned events.
On the other side is Wasserman Schultz, who steadfastly insists she won’t budge from the plan, which was carefully negotiated with the campaigns this spring — part of a process that included convincing the Clinton camp to agree to so many debates in the first place.
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