Prisoner of Conscience, Donald Pledges
Friday, September 4, 2015
Vol. 4, No. 247
Church v. State: Five deputy clerks in Rowan County Kentucky offered to issue same-sex marriage licenses after their boss was found in contempt of court and sent to jail for refusing. District Judge David L. Bunning yesterday ordered Kim Davis to be held “until she complies.” Davis was given the chance to get out if she gave the OK to her deputies, but she declined. She has refused on religious grounds to issue any marriage licenses since the Supreme Court order legalizing same sex marriage.
Couples will be showing up at her office today to get marriage licenses
The situation sets up a test of whether a publicly elected official can apply personal religious beliefs to the public’s business. At least 13 clerks in Texas, Kentucky, and Alabama have refused to issue same sex marriage licenses. Nine of them are in Alabama.
Leader of the Pack: Donald Trump yesterday signed a pledge swearing that he will not run a third party campaign if he doesn’t win the Republican nomination for president.
At the moment he’s in a comfortable position. A Monmouth University poll puts Trump far in the lead with 30 percent support among Republicans. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson jumped 13 points to hit 18 percent. Interestingly, the poll says Carson beats Trump in a head to head match 55 to 36 percent.
Once considered a natural candidate, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is tied at 8 percent with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
Monmouth’s polling director Patrick Murray said in a press release, “The fact that the only one who can challenge Trump is the only other candidate who has never held or run for elected office speaks volumes to the low regard GOP voters have for the establishment.”
Bananas: Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina was put in jail yesterday shortly after he resigned in a corruption scandal. Molina is a target in a multi-million dollar customs fraud investigation that toppled him from power. It’s a big change for Guatemala, a country ruled for years by military dictators and strong men.
Word of the customs corruption, fed by frustration over rising crime and failing public services, led to months of street demonstrations.
Nation: Vice President Joe Biden said in Atlanta last night that he doesn’t know whether he has it in him to run for President after losing his son Beau to cancer. “The most relevant factor in my decision is whether my family and I have the emotional energy to run.” he said.
>Prosecutors in South Carolina say they will seek the death penalty for Dylann Roof, 21, the man accused of the racially motived killing of nine people in a Charleston church.
The Sports Page: A federal judge in New York threw the NFL for a loss yesterday voiding the four-game suspension of New England quarterback Tom Brady. The judge said Brady wasn’t warned that he could be fined for failure to cooperate with the league investigation into underinflated footballs used in last season’s AFC championship, and that there is no precedent for suspending a player guilty of “general awareness” of others’ misconduct.
Brady was not suspended for actually ordering the under inflation of footballs, but the league said he had to have known. Two ball handlers took the fall and were fired by the Patriots.
Unless the NFL gets an injunction, Brady will play in the season opener Sept. 10 against Pittsburgh.
The Obit Page: Leon Gotman, who transformed Maine’s L.L. Bean outdoor equipment company from a stop on the way to get a lobster into an international retailer, died at home in Maine at age 80. Gotman took over in 1967 after the death of his grandfather, Leon Leonwood Bean, the inventor of the rubber-bottomed Maine Hunting Shoe.
Gotman carried on his grandfather’s standard of quality and customer service and he was ahead of the crowd taking Internet orders. By 2013, L. L. Bean had sales of $1.6 billion through 25 retail stores.
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