The Patriot Post® · DOE Uses Dough to Coerce Schools

Only the Department of Education would try to stop bullies by becoming one! Instead of starting a dialogue about what constitutes sexual harassment, the agency is ordering colleges to adopt its radical new definitions — or lose federal funds. Like the rest of the Obama administration, the DOE has gotten into the habit of throwing its weight around without any accountability or justification in the law. And while one of the biggest culprits of that, Secretary Arne Duncan, may be gone, his legacy of intimidation continues.

Not surprisingly, the engine driving this politically correct train is the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR), which has long been an enemy of free speech. Obviously, we all care about sexual assault and bullying, but the changes the DOE requires would fundamentally trample the First Amendment. For starters, the former head of the ACLU pointed out, it would change sexual harassment to mean any “speech with any sexual content that anyone finds offensive.” That overly broad definition, warned Nadine Strossen, “actually does more harm than good to gender justice, not to mention free speech.” The policies for non-verbal abuse are so broad that even a neck rub could be considered “sexual battery.”

Its heavy-handed approach to bullying policies and sex-related incidents is so over the top that even the former president of the ACLU is raking the agency over the coals. Now, thanks to Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and James Lankford (R-Okla.), she has company. In a scathing letter to Acting Secretary John King, Senator Lankford demands to know why the department is bypassing the normal rules process and ordering universities to change their sexual misconduct policies — or else.

Dozens of universities have complained about the agency’s meddling, especially since, as Senator Lankford points out, their guidance isn’t legally binding. So how are they getting away with it? Well, as we’ve seen from other Obama agencies, this is where the federal carrot-and-stick comes in. Instead of using the force of law, OCR is threatening to pull the financial rug out from under colleges who don’t comply. And while several campuses are too afraid to speak out against this bureaucratic blackmail, two heavyweights — Harvard Law and Penn Law — are. In blistering complaints, they argue that not only are the rules fundamentally flawed (ignoring due process and stacking the deck overwhelmingly in the accusers’ favor), but they slipped through without ever being vetted.

“Perhaps,” Senator Lankford wrote, “OCR sought to avoid notice-and-comment procedures, fearing that education officials and other interested groups would have voiced substantive objections to the letters’ policies if given an opportunity.” As the universities pointed out, “Sexual assault is indeed an important problem, but the federal government has dictated a set of policies and twisted universities’ arms into compromising some of the safeguards that we teach our students are essential to fairness.” Unfortunately for students, this is just another example of an administration bent on fundamentally transforming America.

Originally published here.

Obama Thumbs His No’s at Congress

It took years to send a bill to defund Planned Parenthood to the president’s desk — and less than 24 hours for him to reject it. Shortly after noon, President Obama did what everyone expected him to: vetoed a measure that would have ended the moral injustice of ObamaCare and taxpayers’ forced partnership with America’s biggest abortion provider. The bill, which would have reversed some of the havoc these failures have unleashed on the country, was just the eighth that President Obama vetoed in his two terms.

From now on, history will hold this president responsible for shackling Americans to an organization that built its empire on the backs of innocent children and traffics in the sale of their parts. For pro-lifers, the victory was never in the president’s hands — but in Congress’s, which proved its sincerity in fighting for the values we hold dear. As Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) said [Friday], Americans can take heart that this is the beginning of the end of two horrible policies. “The idea that ObamaCare is the law of the land for good is a myth. This law will collapse under its own weight, or it will be repealed. Because all those rules and procedures Senate Democrats have used to block us from doing this? That’s all history,” he added. “We have now shown that there is a clear path to repealing ObamaCare without 60 votes in the Senate. So, next year, if we’re sending this bill to a Republican president, it will get signed into law.”

Our deepest thanks to conservatives in the House and Senate for doing everything it took to make good on their promise to pass a bill defunding Planned Parenthood. We look forward to 2017, when that hard work will finally pay off under the leadership of a pro-life president!

Originally published here.

Clinton-Richards 2016?

For Planned Parenthood, it was never a question of who they’d endorse for president, but when. In the organization’s 100 year-history, the group has never backed a candidate in the primary — until now. Cecile Richards broke the new ground [Thursday] with a glowing statement on Secretary Hillary Clinton and her body of work protecting, funding, and advocating abortion-on-demand. “This [election] is about so much more than Planned Parenthood. Health care for an entire generation is at stake.”

No, it’s the generation itself that’s at stake. If they don’t survive their mother’s womb, what good is health care? Still, the question to some is not whether Planned Parenthood’s support will help Hillary — but what damage it might do. Not everyone is anxious to hitch their wagon to an organization under criminal investigation, but in Clinton’s case, maybe the financial backing is too good to refuse. And speaking of that backing, it certainly sheds some light on Planned Parenthood’s latest annual report.

Despite doing less, the government rewarded Richards with more! Believe it or not, Planned Parenthood enjoyed $25 million more taxpayer dollars than the previous year, even though it lost 39 clinics and saw 200,000 fewer patients. And now we know why. Like we’re seeing with Hillary Clinton, Richards’s group is funneling political money to candidates who will multiple it and send it back once they’re elected. To be clear the money comes from different accounts, but it is the same abortion cartel. In this presidential cycle alone, Planned Parenthood is dedicating more than $20 million to the campaigns of radical pro-aborts — $5 million more than it spent the last time around.

Thanks to the forced contributions from taxpayers — more than a half-billion dollars’ worth — Richards can invest more in the political process. In effect, she’s using our own money to influence politics against us! As far as I’m concerned, there’s a real problem with nonprofit organizations who receive direct taxpayer funding and then turn around with a related entity and indirectly use those dollars to influence the political process. In my opinion, that’s fundamentally un-American. If an organization wants to shape public policy, it should have to raise the funds like we do — not use the government to supplant the dollars it needs.

Originally published here.