BCRW Bag Ban Forum - Support for repeal grows

On Monday, March 25th, the Benton County Republican Women held a Bag Ban Forum at the Comfort Inn Suites in Corvallis with representatives from local businesses, the Corvallis City Council and Voters for Effective Environmental Policy (VEEP). The audience was welcome to ask questions and express their views on the ban on single use plastic bags and related issues. See story and videos at Corvallis TidBits: Plastic Bag Ban Challenge Closer to Becoming Reality. ✧ Visit Voters for Effective Environmental Policy (VEEP) online: https://sites.google.com/site/veepcv/".

BCRW offers its appreciation to Susan McMahon, owner of Donna Bella Lingerie; Catherine Mater, civic, business leader with sustainability expertise; Wiatt Kettle, Milt Weaver and Bruce Harmon of VEEP and; Corvallis City Councilor Biff Traber of Ward 8.

UPDATE NOTICE: Representatives from Voters for Effective Environmental Policy (VEEP) will be the guest speakers at a special meeting of Benton County AFP on Saturday, April 13th, from 11AM to 1PM at King Tin Restaurant, 1857 NW 9th St., in Corvallis. VEEP is circulating a petition to repeal the bag ban ordinance. Read More......

Senate votes to kill Obamacare medical device tax

The Senate on Thursday voted to repeal a sales tax on medical devices that is part of President Obama’s health-care law, a rare bipartisan attempt to strip away a section of the controversial reforms. ✧ Sens. Orrin Hatch, Utah Republican, and Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota Democrat, led the amendment, which passed on a 79-20 vote during debate over the chamber’s budget plan for the coming fiscal year. Read more at the Washington Times... Read More......

U.S. Carbon Emissions Down Due to Increased Use of Natural Gas

The most underreported recent environmental story has been the dramatic decline in energy-related carbon emissions — nearly back to mid-1990s levels, and falling. ✧ Maybe it’s because that story just doesn’t fit the left’s mantra that traditional energy sources are destroying the environment. Read more at Outside the Beltway... Read More......

Senate Votes to Stop US From Joining UN Arms Trade Treaty

Patriot Update - In the last batch of amendment votes to the budget, the Senate voted on several foreign policy proposals. ✧ Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) introduced an amendment that would prevent the United States from entering into the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty in order to uphold the Second Amendment. His amendment passed on a 53-46 vote. ✧ Republicans have been critical of President Obama’s decision to consider the treaty, although Obama has said he would not vote for anything that would violate the Second Amendment. ✧ The U.N. Arms Trade Treaty would regulate international arms sales. Negotiations end on March 28.

Note: Oregon's U.S. Senators, Merkeley and Wyden, voted against the amendment. Read More......

On government spending, GOP faces a reckoning

(Hat tip: John H. Detweiler) It is not surprising that House Republicans have chosen to embrace sequestration’s arbitrary reductions and promote even harsher cuts to government health and education services. Reducing government’s size has been the central goal of the conservative coalition in Congress for at least a decade. ✧ But the so-called sequester may well be the beginning of the end of the budget wars that have long gripped Washington, because Republicans may soon face an electoral reckoning they cannot overcome. The rising coalition of African Americans, Latinos, Asians, women and young people that helped reelect President Obama does not share the anti-government sentiment of the conservative base. Time is running out for those on the right who are seeking to slash the size of government. Read more at the Washington Post...

Related: Chicks on the Right - This Is Conservatism's Biggest Challenge Read More......

Top Ten Obamacare Horror Stories the Media are Covering Up

John Nolte at Breitbart News writes, "Because the mainstream media lobbied every bit as hard as Obama to win passage of ObamaCare, they are every bit as invested in doing whatever is necessary to see that it is perceived as a success. Unfortunately for Americans who expect truth from their media, this means the media are having to manufacture a false reality that says ObamaCare is, to steal a phrase, 'doing fine.' ✧ In order to manufacture this phony reality, the media must further sell their blackened soul by violating one of their most cherished principals: reporting on how government policy hits America's weakest the hardest. It's just a fact that the worst fallout of ObamaCare is already landing hard on the working class, who are losing work hours, jobs, and their insurance." Read more at Breitbart... Read More......

Why Rand Paul's 13-Hour Filibuster Matters

WASHINGTON EXAMINER by Timothy P. Carney, Senior Political Columnist (via Fox Nation) - What did Rand Paul accomplish last night? ✧ Besides delaying for a day the vote on President Obama’s nominee to head the CIA, John Brennan, did Sen. Rand Paul accomplish anything besides “blowing up Twitter,” as his cohort Ted Cruz put it? He certainly did. How much he accomplished will be determined, but here are some places to look: [Abreviated] ✧ He got the major media talking; he got many Republicans to express objections to extrajudicial drone killings; he made a conservative case for limiting war powers; he made a libertarian outreach to the anti-war Left; he exposed the craven partisanship of the Democrats [with a few exceptions including Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR)] and; he made himself a major Republican figure. Read more at Fox Nation...

Related:
Reason Magazine: 3 Takeaways from Rand Paul's #StandwithRand #Filibuster About Drone Strikes
KETV7: 'We had no plan' Read More......