Jeb Bush vows to stay true to beliefs in opening ‘16 race that will test his conservatism ADVERTISING Jeb Bush vows to stay true to beliefs in opening ‘16 race that will test his conservatism MIAMI (AP) — Vowing to
Jeb Bush vows to stay true to beliefs in opening ‘16 race that will test his conservatism
MIAMI (AP) — Vowing to win the Republican presidential nomination on his own merits, Jeb Bush launched a White House bid months in the making Monday with a promise to stay true to his beliefs — easier said than done in a bristling primary contest where his conservative credentials will be sharply challenged.
“Not a one of us deserves the job by right of resume, party, seniority, family, or family narrative. It’s nobody’s turn,” Bush said, confronting critics who suggest he simply seeks to inherit the office already held by his father and brother. “It’s everybody’s test, and it’s wide open — exactly as a contest for president should be.”
Bush sought to turn the prime argument against his candidacy on its head, casting himself as the true Washington outsider while lashing out at competitors in both parties as being part of the problem. He opened his campaign at a rally near his south Florida home at Miami Dade College, an institution with a large and diverse student body that symbolizes the nation he seeks to lead.
“The presidency should not be passed on from one liberal to the next,” he declared in a jab at Democratic favorite Hillary Rodham Clinton.
And he said: “We are not going to clean up the mess in Washington by electing the people who either helped create it or have proven incapable of fixing it.”
Leader of NAACP chapter resigns after her parents say she has been posing for years as black
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Rachel Dolezal resigned as president of the NAACP’s Spokane chapter Monday just days after her parents said she is a white woman posing as black — a dizzyingly swift fall for an activist credited with injecting remarkable new energy into the civil rights organization.
The furor touched off fierce debate around the country over racial identity and divided the NAACP itself.
“In the eye of this current storm, I can see that a separation of family and organizational outcomes is in the best interest of the NAACP,” Dolezal, who was elected the chapter’s president last fall, wrote on the group’s Facebook page. “Please know I will never stop fighting for human rights.”
City officials, meanwhile, are investigating whether she lied about her ethnicity when she landed an appointment to Spokane’s police oversight board. On her application, she said her ethnic origins included white, black and American Indian.
Dolezal, a 37-year-old woman with a light brown complexion and dark curly hair, graduated from historically black Howard University, teaches African studies at a local university and was married to a black man. For years, she publicly described herself as black and complained repeatedly of being the victim of racial hatred in the heavily white region.
Theater shooter’s hatred for psychiatrists kept them in the dark about his massacre plans
CENTENNIAL, Colo. (AP) — The person closest to the murderous thoughts of James Holmes before he carried out his attack on a Colorado movie theater is someone he tried very hard to keep in the dark.
Dr. Lynne Fenton saw Holmes five times in 2012 and prescribed him drugs for anxiety and depression, concerned he had a social phobia after he confessed to thoughts of killing people, according to testimony in his death penalty trial.
Her own testimony is highly anticipated, because despite their tense relationship, she was the mental health professional closest to Holmes before the shooting.
But Holmes said he pointedly kept Fenton uninformed as he plotted his attack. He never told her about the arsenal of weapons he was assembling. His elaborate schemes and to-do lists were kept in a journal that he didn’t send to her until hours before his assault, and it lingered in a campus mail room for days thereafter.
His list for their sessions included: “Prevent building false sense of rapport … deflect incriminating questions … can’t tell the mind rapists plan.”
Minnesota archbishop’s downfall follows claims he didn’t protect children from abusive clergy
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Archbishop John Nienstedt’s leadership of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis unraveled over a painful two years.
A church archivist accused him of leaving abusive clergy in parishes and church jobs without warning parents or police. A task force he appointed to investigate confirmed the archdiocese had been negligent. Around the same time, he faced allegations of his own inappropriate sexual conduct, but he didn’t reveal specifics.
Through it all, Nienstedt rejected calls for his resignation. Then, less than two weeks ago, a prosecutor brought child-endangerment charges against the archdiocese, and on Monday, he stepped down.
“I leave with a clear conscience knowing that my team and I have put in place solid protocols to ensure the protection of minors and vulnerable adults,” Nienstedt wrote in the announcement.
But the Rev. Michael Tegeder, a Minneapolis priest and frequent Nienstedt critic, said the archbishop “came into this diocese without really any empathy” and “undermined so many of the good things that were going on here.”
Government system stores data on HealthCare.gov customers for at least 10 years
WASHINGTON (AP) — A government data warehouse that stores personal information on millions of HealthCare.gov customers is raising privacy concerns at a time when major breaches have become distressingly common.
A government privacy assessment dated Jan. 15 says data “is maintained indefinitely at this time,” but the administration said Monday no final time frame has been decided, and the National Archives has recommended a 10-year retention period.
Known as MIDAS, the system is described on a federal website as the “perpetual central repository” for information collected under President Barack Obama’s health care law.
The information stored includes names, Social Security numbers, birthdates, addresses, phone numbers, passport numbers, employment status and financial accounts.
The vast scope of the information — and the lack of a final plan for destroying old records nearly four years after the system was commissioned — have raised concerns about privacy and the government’s judgment on technology.
