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Supreme Court: Texas can refuse to issue Confederate flag license plate

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld Texas' refusal to issue a license plate bearing the Confederate battle flag, rejecting a free-speech challenge.
The court said in a 5-4 ruling that Texas can limit the content of license plates because they are state property and not the equivalent of bumper stickers.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans had sought a Texas plate bearing its logo with the battle flag. A state board rejected it over concerns that the license plate would offend many Texans.
Justice Stephen Breyer said the state's decision to reject the group's plate did not violate its free speech rights. Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas and the court's other three liberal justices joined Breyer's opinion.
The Supreme Court has previously ruled that states can't force drivers to display license plates that contain messages with which the drivers disagree, Breyer said. "And just as Texas cannot require SCV (the Sons of Confederate Veterans) to convey `the state's ideological message,"' Breyer said, quoting from that earlier ruling, "SCV cannot force Texas to include a Confederate battle flag on its specialty license plates."
The state can prohibit some messages even though there are now nearly 450 specialty plates to choose from, he said. Those plates include "Choose Life" to the Boy Scouts and hamburger chains.
The Texas division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans sued over the state's decision not to authorize its proposed license plate with its logo bearing the battle flag, similar to plates issued by eight other states that were members of the Confederacy and by the state of Maryland.
A panel of federal appeals court judges ruled that the board's decision violated the group's First Amendment rights. "We understand that some members of the public find the Confederate flag offensive. But that fact does not justify the board's decision," Judge Edward Prado of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans wrote.
Texas' main argument to the Supreme Court is that the license plate is not like a bumper sticker slapped on the car by its driver. Instead, the state said, license plates are government property, and so what appears on them is not private individuals' speech but the government's. The First Amendment applies when governments try to regulate the speech of others, but not when governments are doing the talking.
Justice Samuel Alito said in dissent that the decision "threatens private speech that the government finds displeasing."
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia also dissented.

Spokane votes to remove Rachel Dolezal from police commission

The Spokane City Council has voted to remove Rachel Dolezal, the former Spokane NAACP president, from the city's volunteer police ombudsman commission.
The 6-0 vote came Thursday afternoon, KREM-TV reported.
On Wednesday, Mayor David Condon and Spokane Council President Ben Stuckart called for Dolezal and two others to step down from the five-member commission after an independent investigation found the three commissioners acted improperly and violated government rules.
The evidence and interviews confirmed workplace harassment allegations and "a pattern of misconduct" by Dolezal, the chairwoman, and two other commissioners, the report said. The council accepted the resignation of one of those commissioners and voted to give the other more time to respond.
Dolezal, 37, resigned as head of the NAACP's Spokane chapter this week after her parents said she was a white woman pretending to be black.
In May, the city hired lawyers to investigate whistleblower complaints filed by an unidentified city employee who staffed the police commission. The report said Dolezal abused her authority by trying to supervise the Office of Police Ombudsman personnel and she exhibited bias against law enforcement, despite rules requiring fairness and impartiality.
Dolezal's duties as commissioner and as NAACP president were in conflict because she actively engaged in protests of officer-involved shootings, the report also said.
In a statement Wednesday, Dolezal said she and the other two commissioners did nothing wrong and had reviewed their actions with lawyers.
Dolezal resigned her NAACP leadership post after her parents accused her of posing as black despite her Czech, German and Swedish ancestry. When asked by NBC's Matt Lauer earlier this week if she is an "an African-American woman," Dolezal said: "I identify as black."

House OKs Obama trade agenda on 2nd try, bill heads to Senate

The House on Thursday approved a key plank of President Obama's trade agenda after the push nearly imploded amid Democratic resistance last week, sending the bill to the Senate where it still faces an uncertain fate.
The 218-208 vote nevertheless marked a significant victory for Obama and his pro-trade supporters in both parties. The vote came after Obama huddled Wednesday evening with congressional allies to try to craft a way forward.
The bill would specifically give the president so-called "fast-track" authority to approve trade deals, which Obama wants to seal a 12-nation pact involving Japan and 11 other countries bordering the Pacific Ocean.
The mechanics of the vote are some of the most complicated in recent memory, in a legislative body notorious for esoteric procedural maneuvers. The vote failed in the House last week because another measure it was attached to was defeated by a coalition of Democrats and Republicans.
It was labor-aligned Democrats, in particular, who caused the biggest headaches for the White House. Democrats have fought the measure for months, for fear it would lead to the loss of U.S. jobs overseas. "Let's kill this donkey once and for all," Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Md., said before the latest vote.
On Thursday, House leaders moved to vote only on the "fast-track" measure, known as Trade Promotion Authority. The measure on the House floor would give Obama authority to negotiate global trade deals that Congress can approve or reject, but not change. Other recent presidents have had the same prerogative Obama seeks.
With the bill's approval, it heads back to the Senate where lawmakers would have to approve it in tact in order to send it to Obama's desk.
The issue has led to unusual alliances and factions on Capitol Hill, with some Tea Party-aligned Republicans and labor-aligned Democrats joining forces to resist it -- while pro-trade Democrats and GOP congressional leaders side with the White House.
The House debate and vote Thursday marked the beginning of an extraordinary rescue operation that the White House and GOP leaders in Congress hope will result in passage of both bills by the end of next week. The other bill, not addressed on Thursday, would renew an expiring program of aid for workers who lose their jobs because of imports.
"We are committed to ensuring both ... get votes in the House and Senate and are sent to the president for signature," House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a joint statement issued Wednesday in an attempt to reassure pro-trade Democrats whose votes will be needed.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi had no comment on the day's events. The California Democrat joined the revolt last week in which her party's rank-and-file lawmakers helped vote down the aid package that they customarily support, calculating their actions would prevent the entire trade package from reaching Obama's desk.
Supporters of the president's agenda argue that the United States must stay involved in international trade, in part because otherwise, countries like China will write the rules to their own advantage. The administration's immediate negotiating objective is a round of talks involving 12 countries in Asia, North America and South America.
Organized labor and other opponents of international trade deals say they cost thousands of American workers their jobs by shifting employment to foreign countries with low wages, poor working conditions and lax environmental standards.
Officials in Congress said Boehner and McConnell hope to have both the trade and the aid legislation to the president by the time lawmakers begin a scheduled vacation at the end of next week.

Sources: Clinton confidant who sent Libya memos paid $200G by Brock network

The Clinton confidant under scrutiny on Capitol Hill over detailed Libya memos he sent to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told lawmakers earlier this week he has been pulling in $200,000 a year from Clinton ally David Brock's media operation, congressional sources tell FoxNews.com.
The figure is far higher than initially reported.
While the payments to Sidney Blumenthal may not reflect any apparent conflict of interest, his work with Brock's liberal advocacy and media groups was a focus of his high-profile deposition on Tuesday before the House Benghazi committee. Republicans' rationale for the questioning was that his financial and political interests are important context, at a time when he was sending high-level guidance to Clinton.
Politico.com first reported that Republicans grilled Blumenthal on his work for Brock's groups. But while the report said Blumenthal was making more than $10,000 a month, congressional sources say he acknowledged during the deposition he actually had a $200,000-a-year contract.
The money was in addition to the $10,000 a month he was getting for work with the Clinton Foundation.
"He was getting, from Clinton, Inc., $320,000 a year," one source told FoxNews.com.
The Brock-founded groups are not actually part of the Clinton empire, though Brock is a Clinton ally. The source said Blumenthal has been working with Media Matters, American Bridge and Correct the Record. Another congressional source, though, told FoxNews.com the contract was specifically with Media Matters.
Though it's unclear exactly what Blumenthal was paid to do, Politico reported his work entailed giving high-level strategy and messaging guidance, and the Benghazi debate was likely part of that. The groups above have busily defended then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from GOP broadsides.
Emails related to this work surfaced in the package of documents delivered to the Benghazi committee ahead of Tuesday's session -- emails that weren't part of the initial package of documents handed over by the State Department.
One of those emails to Clinton linked several Media Matters posts on Benghazi, essentially defending the State Department.
FoxNews.com is told one of them read: "Got all this done, complete refutation on Libya smear." The email said, "Philippe can circulate these links." Philippe Reines was a senior adviser to Clinton.
Asked for comment on the deposition, and on Blumenthal's payments, Brock blasted the committee's latest inquiry.
"Despite the fact that the conclusions of nine congressional committee reports and the findings from an independent review board don't support his political agenda, Chairman [Trey] Gowdy keeps doubling down and expanding his taxpayer funded fishing expedition in the hopes of undermining Secretary Clinton's presidential campaign," Brock told FoxNews.com in an email. "This week's spectacle is the latest proof that he is failing."
FoxNews.com has reached out to Blumenthal's attorney for comment.
Blumenthal's deposition lasted most of the day on Tuesday. FoxNews.com is told the Brock work "came up," though the committee did not spend hours grilling him about it.
The committee sought to interview Blumenthal over his role sending detailed memos on Libya to Clinton in 2011 and 2012.   
The New York Times first reported on Blumenthal's memos and said the information was coming from "business associates" Blumenthal was advising, including former CIA official Tyler Drumheller.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., chairman of the committee, told Fox News earlier this week that the memos themselves were actually sent by Drumheller. He said Blumenthal didn't write them, and was just passing on the "unvetted, uncorroborated, unsubstantiated intelligence."
After the deposition on Tuesday, Blumenthal said he answered every question over the course of nine hours. He said the emails were mostly "old news" and hopes he cleared up "misconceptions."
He said he wasn't involved in any of the administration's decision-making, and attributed his appearance before the committee to "politics."
Democrats were fuming over Tuesday's session and have called on Gowdy to release the transcript of the deposition. Further, they say the latest documents reveal no "smoking gun" about the Benghazi attacks, which killed four Americans.
[I]n fact, they hardly relate to Benghazi at all," Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., top Democrat on the committee, said in a statement.
FoxNews.com is told Blumenthal only disclosed his payments from Brock's groups on Tuesday after he was specifically asked about them -- and that he didn't initially disclose them when asked about his sources of income.