Rand Paul’s Planned Parenthood bill may get a vote
WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans are looking to vote on defunding Planned Parenthood before leaving the Capitol for August recess.
It’s an effort that is unlikely to be much more than a procedural or show-vote given that they only control 54 seats in the chamber and the Democratic minority is certain to balk at any vote without a 60-vote threshold.
Two sources familiar with the situation told CQ Roll Call that the Senate is likely to hold a procedural vote on a standalone bill introduced by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., that would block federal funding for the Planned Parenthood organization. The chamber is currently working to burn time needed to overcome procedural hurdles on highway legislation.
The most likely vote would be on limiting debate on a motion to proceed.
Boy Scouts end blanket ban on gay adult leaders
DALLAS — The Boy Scouts of America have ended a blanket ban on gay adult leaders while allowing church-sponsored Scout units to maintain the exclusion because of their faith.
The new policy, aimed at easing a controversy that embroiled the Boy Scouts for years and threatened the organization with lawsuits, takes effect immediately. It was approved Monday by the BSA’s 80-member National Executive Board in a teleconference.
Seventy-nine percent voted in favor of the resolution.
“Moving forward, we will continue to focus on reaching and serving youth, helping them grow into good, strong citizens,” the Boy Scouts of America said in a statement. “By focusing on the goals that unite us, we are able to accomplish incredible things for young people and the communities we serve.”
The stage had been set for Monday’s action on May 21, when the BSA’s president, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, told the Scouts’ national meeting that the long-standing ban on participation by openly gay adults was no longer sustainable. He said the ban was likely to be the target of lawsuits that the Scouts were likely to lose.
“I truly fear that any other alternative will be the end of us as a national movement,” he said.
In a prepared statement Monday, Gates said the issue has “divided and distracted us” for too long.
Judge says she did not involuntarily commit theater gunman
CARROLLTON, Ga. — The gunman responsible for last week’s deadly attack in a Louisiana movie theater was delivered by deputies to hospital for a mental evaluation in 2008 after his family said he was a danger to himself and others.
But the judge who ordered John Russell Houser detained said Monday that she did not have him involuntarily committed, which may explain why he was able to legally purchase the gun he used to kill two people and wound nine others before killing himself.
Funerals were held Monday in Louisiana for Jillian Johnson and Mayci Marie Breaux, the two women killed when Houser opened fire in a theater in the city of Lafayette.
Houser’s case underscores the concerns raised in the aftermath of other mass shootings involving suspects with mental health issues — and the gaps in the system meant to “red-flag” people ill-suited to own or carry a firearm.
While an Alabama sheriff said that he denied Houser’s application for a concealed weapons’ permit in 2006, there appears to have been nothing in court filings that would raise concerns in the FBI background check system.
Contrary to legal filings by Houser’s family, Carroll County Probate Judge Betty Cason said she did not order Houser to be involuntarily committed for mental health treatment at the West Central Regional Hospital in Columbus, Georgia, which is in Muscogee County, where she lacks jurisdiction.
Doctors at the hospital would have had to petition that county’s probate judge for such a commitment, so “it wouldn’t have come through me,” Cason told The Associated Press.
This might explain why Houser passed a federal background check in February 2014 allowing him to buy the .40-caliber handgun, despite years of erratic and menacing behavior and run-ins with neighbors, local politicians, and law enforcement officials.
Colombia unearths landfill looking for scores of disappeared
MEDELLIN, Colombia — The last contact Margarita Restrepo had with her daughter was a hurried phone call on Oct. 25, 2002. The school day was over and 17-year-old Carol Vanesa was going to meet friends at a metro stop near the sprawling Comuna 13 hillside slum.
Restrepo and her children had fled the violent Medellin neighborhood a few days earlier, right before it was taken over by thousands of Colombian soldiers trying to ferret out leftist rebels. She begged the girl not to risk returning there, but the teen went anyway. Neither she nor her two friends have been seen again and, to this day, nobody knows who is responsible for their disappearance.
Thirteen years later, Restrepo and dozens of others who have missing loved ones are closer than ever to closure. On Monday, a team of forensic experts will begin removing 31,000 cubic yards of rubble from La Escombrera, a debris landfill on Medellin’s outskirts where the remains of as many as 300 people are believed to have been dumped during one of the darkest chapters of Colombia’s long-running civil conflict.
Human rights activists say it could be the biggest mass grave ever in Colombia and the dig represents a glimmer of hope that justice will be realized. But the search will be complicated. Despite more than a decade-long clamor by victims’ families that the landfill be closed and excavated, giant trucks have continued to dump construction waste daily.
Former 41-pound fat cat in Texas slims down to 19 pounds
DALLAS — A former 41-pound cat dubbed Skinny has lost more than half of his weight to become the darling of a Dallas veterinary clinic.
Dr. Brittney Barton says the orange tabby she adopted in 2013 has slimmed to 19 pounds with exercise and a special diet. Barton calls Skinny the “resident cat” at her practice, HEAL Veterinary Hospital.
Barton said Friday that Skinny spends weekdays roaming the clinic. The ex-fat cat’s weekends are spent at home with Barton and her family.
The vet says Skinny, who was found abandoned near Dallas in 2012 and ended up at a shelter, just had his annual checkup and he’s healthy.
Barton says Skinny is living proof that while he’s supposed to be a large cat, “he’s not supposed to be an obese cat.”
By wire sources.