ActRight

Sen. Ted Cruz is expanding his footprint into South Carolina, hiring a veteran conservative operative there to advise his likely 2016 presidential campaign. The Texas Republican's political team confirmed Monday that it has tapped LaDonna Ryggs to help lead Cruz' efforts in South Carolina. The state hosts the third nominating contest of the 2016 primary — and first in the GOP-dominated South. Ryggs, a former GOP county chairman, isn't necessarily a household name. But she has close ties to the Republican base that Cruz hopes will fuel his rise. Ryggs also has relationships with the party Establishment and bring's to the senator's operation years of experience navigating the ins and outs of South Carolina primary campaigns. I like LaDonna, a South Carolina GOP insider said. She's respected by activists. Ryggs is working for Cruz' Jobs, Growth & Freedom Fund political action committee as a senior advisor. The senator is not yet a candidate for president, but he is expected to announce for the White House sometime this spring. Ryggs was most recently the managing editor of Palladian View, a digital magazine for conservative Republican women. She earned graduate and undergraduate degrees from Bob Jones University.

In the last days of World War II, the Red Army’s rampaging assaults on Austria and Germany included the raping of hundreds of thousands of women. When a senior Communist denounced such behavior, Josef Stalin criticized not the rapist soldiers, but the Communist: “Can’t he understand if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometers through blood and fire and death, has fun with a woman or takes some trifle?” Once, sexual violence inflicted on women was regarded as a normal part of war, whether to be celebrated as the victor’s “taking some trifle,” or regretted as part of what makes war hell. Soviet sexual violence was extreme during World War II, but, though totals are debated, American, French and British rape victims too were counted in the many thousands.

Child care centers operate on razor-thin margins — thinner, even, than those of the restaurant industry — and many are lucky to wind up in the black at the end of the year. A restaurant can raise prices to meet the new cost of doing business, but child care operations have limited flexibility. Both the state-funded programs and their private counterparts are bound by strict state ratio requirements, which mandate that a certain number of employees be present with the children each day. “That’s one of the unintended consequences” of Oakland’s Measure FF, the November ballot measure that raised the city’s minimum wage from $9 an hour, said Richard Winefield, executive director of the nonprofit child care referral service Bananas. A lot of (centers) are run on very narrow margins, and when they increase the hourly rate on their employees, they need to pass that on in tuition costs, so families need to fork over more money. Winefield says that in most cases, parents waiting for a subsidy make a few dollars a week above the cutoff for state welfare, but are still “very much in need.” Doutherd keeps track of the many painful testimonials from these parents, some of whom can’t keep jobs because they have no one to look after their children. Because they don’t have employment, many are also unable to find housing, she says. Charlotte Guinn, whose home day care center is entering its 20th year in downtown Oakland, says she raised monthly tuition prices by $40 to $60 in January to anticipate the minimum wage hike, to about $950 a month. “I have people who park in front of my home and walk to work so they can save $600 to pay for child care,” she said, adding that one parent recently begged for a payment deadline extension after her car broke down. Guinn has tried to cut corners in every way possible, asking parents to donate crayons or napkins, and even urging them to sell candy door-to-door to raise money. Because of ratio requirements, she can’t lay off any staff to meet her new bottom line. Lift Up Oakland, the group that campaigned to get the minimum wage raised, maintains that businesses will not be hurt by Measure FF. The group, on its website, estimates, “Operating costs will increase by 0.3 percent for retail and 2.8 percent for restaurants.” [...] workers in the city’s child care industry said they supported Measure FF even though they knew it could create hardship for their businesses. Angie Garling, early care and education program administrator for Alameda County, concurred, calling it “a shame” that the caregivers who make it possible for Oakland parents to go to work every day are still at the bottom of the pay scale. At City Hall, Mayor Libby Schaaf has pulled together a group of local foundations to create an assistance plan for struggling nonprofits, including state-funded child care programs, according to a spokeswoman.

Ted Cruz responds to reports that he terrified a three-year-old girl with a political speech over the weekend. » Subscribe to Late Night: http://bit.ly/LateN...

If President Barack Obama’s immigration plan gets past a federal court injunction and 60 percent of illegals apply for deferred action protection under the plan, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration S

Jose and Ana Sanchez ran for their lives during El Salvador's civil war, resettled in Los Angeles and joined the working class.

The White House Office of Administration says it's not an agency under the Freedom of Information Act

The DOJ reports on Ferguson are in. My policy is to read the full accounts prior to commenting, and in this case, I'm very glad I did. The two reports issued by the DOJ offer very different and conflicting images of the August events in Ferguson....

We've reached peak endorsement power.

A 10-year LAPD officer and a second person were charged by federal prosecutors Monday with trying to smuggle a Mexican citizen into the United States in the trunk of a car at the Otay Mesa border crossing.

Missouri Lt. Governor Peter Kinder joined Steve Malzberg today on Newsmax TV to discuss the latest developments in Ferguson. Kinder told Steve there's more racism in the Department of Justice than anywhere in St. Louis. "The whole blowup of this…

According to sources of the New York Post‘s Edward Klein, President Obama's closest adviser Valerie Jarrett was the source of the leaks of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail address during her...

What won’t global warming do? New studies argue that global warming will make everything worse, from the weather to the steak millions of people enjoy at barbecues. A recent study by German scien

I’ve learned the real reason why Mitt Romney chose not to run for president for a third time in 2016. He’s taking up boxing. In fact, Romney is slated to fight former heavyweight boxing champion ...

Two students at Ryerson University in Toronto were told they could not attend a meeting of the school's Racialized Students' Collective because they weren't -

Lieutenant Commander Wes Modder, a highly decorated veteran who has served 19 years in the Navy and now serves as a chaplain, is now at risk of losing his job because of an accusation that he is unable to “function in the diverse and pluralistic environment” in the Navy. Modder was on track for early …

A New Hampshire mother is setting the record straight after multiple national news outlets reported Monday that Sen. Ted Cruz terrified her 3-year-old girl with a metaphor about the world being on fire.

National Geographic’s latest cover story has generated lots of attention because it sneers at those close-minded Americans — mostly conservatives, of course — who do not accept scientific “facts.” Only 40 percent of Americans (according to Pew Research Center) “accept that human activity is the dominant cause of global warming,” and the magazine finds it “dispiriting” that so many “reasonable people doubt science.”

It is not comparable to Senator Tom Cotton’s letter.

The practice of replacing American workers with cheaper H-1B guestworkers is widespread.

Why is the IRS now making it as difficult as possible for the public (and Congress) to see rulings that grant exempt status? What is it hiding?

Did Team Jeb not know they had a Clinton-esque email problem, or did they count on not getting caught?

VICE founder Shane Smith interviews President Barack Obama, discussing a host of issues important to Americans, from foreign policy and marijuana legalizatio...

A sweeping study of some 130,213 news articles on the 2012 presidential match between President Obama and Mitt Romney has proven anew that there was a strong pro-Democratic bias in the U.S. and international press. The study, published in the authoritative journal Big Data & Society, also tested the campaign themes the media focused on and determined that Obama succeeded in stealing the economic issue from Republican Romney. The 2012 elections saw an 'issue trespassing' strategy with President Obama taking the initiative on the economy, found the survey of stories produced by 719 U.S. and international outlets. RELATED: Study finds IRS suppression of Tea Party swung 2012 election The survey used a technical language processing analysis to filter all the stories and found that Obama was portrayed as an attack dog and Romney on defense. Key was Obama's ability to own the economic message despite Romney's repeated assaults and the public's general view that the GOP handles the economy better.

Steve Forbes discusses the impact that the flat tax would have on the economy, on working Americans and on American families.