Sunday, January 24, 2016

Fox News Poll: Trump gains in Iowa, still dominates in New Hampshire

Rosie O'donnell Cartoon

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Donald Trump Says Megyn Kelly Should Skip Debate; Fox Says She’ll Be There



Since Megyn Kelly’s pointed question to Donald J. Trump about his treatment of women in the first Republican debate, he has been attacking her regularly, through Tweets and on the campaign trail. Bailey comment: "He should attack her, she ambushed him in the first debate"!
His most recent attack: Ms. Kelly shouldn’t be allowed to moderate the next debate, to be held on Thursday, because of “conflict of interest and bias.”
Since August, the bad blood has been decidedly one-sided, as Mr. Trump has repeatedly called Ms. Kelly a liar and overrated, and retweeted supporters calling her a bimbo. Most memorably, he seemed to suggest she was menstruating during the debate when he said in an interview, “you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”
Ms. Kelly had asked Mr. Trump during the debate about his history of disparaging women he did not like by calling them “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.” After he criticized her, she stood her ground, saying in August that she planned to “continue doing my job without fear or favor.” She has never engaged with the candidate on any of his attacks, and has had his supporters on her show, including most recently Sarah Palin.
Fox News showed no signs of giving in to Mr. Trump’s displeasure with the questioning, stating just a week following the first debate that all three moderators would again host the debate in January.
On Saturday, it reiterated that stance, saying in a statement: “Megyn Kelly has no conflict of interest. Donald Trump is just trying to build up the audience for Thursday’s debate, for which we thank him.”

Request to delay January release of Clinton emails blames snow, Republicans say ask political, tied to early primaries

The State Department is asking a federal court for a one-month extension for the January 29 release of emails from former agency secretary Hillary Clinton, citing in part problems from this weekend’s snow storm and sparking outrage from Republicans about the delay influencing early voting in the White House race.
“It’s clear that the State Department’s delay is all about ensuring any further damaging developments in Hillary Clinton’s email scandal are revealed only after the votes are counted in the early nominating states,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus after the request Friday.
Lawyers for the agency, which Clinton ran from 2011 to 2013, made the request in a federal court in Washington, which in May ordered the emails to be released monthly, in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
“The Clinton email team must perform its work on site. … This storm will disrupt the Clinton email team’s current plans to work a significant number of hours throughout the upcoming weekend and could affect the number of documents that can be produced on January 29, 2016,” agency lawyers wrote in their request.
Clinton, the Democratic front-runner for the 2016 nomination, exclusively used a private email account and a home server during her time at the agency. She said this was a decision made out of convenience and has denied doing anything wrong.
An extension, if granted, would push the complete publication of Clinton's emails past several of the earliest primary contests, including the key states of Iowa and New Hampshire. If they come out instead on Feb. 29, it would be a day before the critical Super Tuesday primaries.
“The American people should be outraged at the Obama administration’s gamesmanship to protect someone who recklessly exposed classified information on more than 1,300 occasions, including highly sensitive Top Secret intelligence,” Priebus continued.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Friday the agency cannot meet its court-mandated goal of Jan. 29 because about 9,400 of the 55,000 remaining pages "contain a large amount of material that required interagency review."
“The remaining emails are also the most complex to process," he said.
However, the agency will make public as many as possible next week, Toner also said.
The Clinton campaign referred questions by Fox News back to the State Department, include a request to respond to the RNC saying the extension request was politically connected to the 2016 voting schedule.
Some of the most contentious emails haven't yet been published. They include two that an intelligence community auditor says are "top secret" and others he claims are even more sensitive, containing information from so-called special access programs. Such programs suggest the emails could reveal details about intelligence sources.
The State Department says no emails published so far contained material with "top secret" information or any material that was marked classified at the time. The issue has nagged at Clinton's presidential campaign, with the FBI said to be examining in some capacity.
Toner said the delay in publication isn't the result of "ongoing discussion about classification" that has been made public recently. He said he couldn't comment further on ongoing litigation.

Clinton, Rubio score key Iowa paper's endorsement ahead of caucuses


Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Marco Rubio each won a key endorsement Saturday from the Des Moines Register newspaper,(
The Register first endorsed candidates in the 1988 caucuses. "Before that time, the thinking on the editorial board was that the Register, as an independent newspaper, should refrain from getting mixed up in the internal affairs of the Democratic and Republican parties as they chose their nominees," wrote Richard Doak, former Register opinion editor. "The thinking changed in the run-up to the 1988 caucuses."
That year was much like this year, drawing several candidates to Iowa to vie for the nominations of both parties.)
eight days before the state holds its first-in-the nation voting caucus for president.
"If there’s one thing Democrats and Republicans agree on this year, it’s the fact that the next president will face enormous challenges," the paper's editorial board said in endorsing the Democratic front-runner and Florida GOP senator.
The paper, considered Iowa's most prominent daily, said the next president must work with Congress in confronting a host of issues including immigration, health care, gun control and the growing national security threat.
And he or she must "on the world stage" work with foreign leaders in stopping the Islamic State and other terrorists, North Korea and Iran's nuclear threat and the Russian incursions in Ukraine.
The paper said Clinton was "not a perfect candidate" but that no other can "match the depth or breadth of her knowledge and experience."
Board members said Republicans have the opportunity to define their party’s future in this election by choosing “anger, pessimism and fear.” Or it could be the party in which Rubio “the son of an immigrant bartender and maid could become president,” they said.
“Rubio has the potential to chart a new direction for the party, and perhaps the nation, with his message of restoring the American dream. We endorse him because he represents his party’s best hope,” the board said in an apparent rejection of the political rhetoric of front-running Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who are in a close race to win the Iowa GOP caucus.
The Clinton endorsement comes ahead of the Feb. 1 caucus in which Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders trails Clinton 42-to-48, according to the RealClearPolitics poll average.
The board argued Sanders was "an honorable and formidable campaigner" but said even Sanders' acknowledges that essentially all of his reform plans have no chance of being approved by a GOP-heavy Congress.

The editorial board acknowledged concerns about how Clinton handled “the furor over her private email server" and argued that she has yet to realize that "when she makes a mistake, she should just say so."
The Democratic and Republican candidates met twice with the board in question-and-answer sessions.
“It’s been a long time since the Republican Party has had an agenda that talks to students,” the board said after Rubio’s meetings.
While calling Rubio “whip smart,” the board also suggested that he and some of his plans, including one to replace ObamaCare, remain a work in progress.
 Trump and others, the board suggested, have responded to the public’s anger and frustration with Washington by trying to demonize government and “resorting to the cheap demagoguery.”

Trump weighs lawsuit over Cruz citizenship


Businessman Donald Trump hinted Saturday he might decide to sue rival Texas Sen. Ted Cruz over the legality of his U.S. citizenship.
“Ted has a lot of problems – number one Canada. He could run for the Prime Minister of Canada and I wouldn’t even complain because he was born in Canada, it’s a serious thing,” Trump told a few thousand supporters at a rally in Sioux Center, Iowa.
He said Democrats would look to sue Cruz if he became the Republican nominee. “There are already two lawsuits filed, but they don’t have standing, I have standing to sue (as a candidate), can you imagine if I did it? Should I do it just for fun?”
Though Trump went on to explain he’s confident on winning the GOP nomination, thus “I don’t really think its going to matter, that’s probably why I want to save the legal fees … maybe I would do it, maybe I won’t either”.
Cruz pushed back earlier this month during the Fox Business debate on claims made against him. “You know, back in September, my friend Donald said that he had had his lawyers look at this from every which way, and there was no issue there. There was nothing to this birther issue.”
He added, “the facts and the law here are really quite clear. Under longstanding U.S. law, the child of a U.S. citizen born abroad is a natural-born citizen.”
Cruz did become a Canadian citizen at birth due to that’s country legal system, which the senator didn’t realize until 2013. He formally renounced his Canadian citizenship in May 2014.
While there is debate over what defines American citizenship, the Supreme Court has never ruled directly on the criteria for presidential office holders.
In 2008, then-Republican presidential candidate John McCain faced questions over his own citizenship since he was born in the Panama Canal Zone, a U.S. territory at the time.  Attempts to further the debate over his status didn’t pan out.
McCain did tell Phoenix radio station 550 KFYI in early January that his situation was different. The Arizona senator said that he “didn’t know” about Cruz’s eligibility to run for president and added, “it’s worth looking into”.

Biden says US, Turkey prepared for military solution against ISIS in Syria


Vice President Joe Biden said Saturday the U.S. and Turkey are prepared for a military solution against ISIS in Syria should the Syrian government and rebel-opposition forces fail to reach a peace agreement during its upcoming meeting in Geneva.
The next round of Syrian peace talks are scheduled to take place Monday, but are at risk of being postponed over a dispute over who will comprise the opposition delegation, according to Reuters. Syrian rebels said they hold the Syrian government and Russia responsible should the peace talks fail to bring an end to the civil war that has torn the country completely apart.
"We do know it would better if we can reach a political solution but we are prepared ..., if that's not possible, to have a military solution to this operation in taking out Daesh," Biden said at a news conference after a meeting with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.
A U.S. official later told Reuters that Biden’s comment was talking about a military solution to defeating Islamic State, not Syria as a whole. Biden said he and Dabutoglu have also discussed how both the U.S. and Turkey can support Sunni Arab forces fighting to force out Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
He also met with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, capping a two-day visit to Istanbul focused on boosting the fight against ISIS militants and trying to resolve the Syrian crisis.
U.S. has backed Syrian rebels with Special Forces soldiers to help train them. Washington is also conducting air strikes against ISIS, which holds large swaths of Syria and Iraq.
Secretary of State John Kerry also said Saturday he was confident Syria peace talks would proceed. Kerry met with Riad Hijab, chair of the Syrian opposition’s High Negotiations Committee and other delegates representing the Syrian opposition.
"They discussed the upcoming U.N.-sponsored negotiations regarding a political transition in Syria and all agreed on the urgent need to end the violence afflicting the Syrian people," State Department spokesman John Kirby said.
Kerry emphasized how important it is to maintain the momentum of the International Syria Support Group, a group of big world and regional powers backing peace efforts in the war-torn nation, Kirby said.
Biden also offered his condolences over a Jan. 12 terror attack that killed 12 German tourists in Istanbul. The Turkish authorities say the suicide bomber was linked to the Islamic State.
"We have a robust operation and commitment to defeat ISIL," said Biden, crediting Turkey for increasing efforts to secure its 550-mile border with Syria, as well as allowing anti-IS coalition aircraft to use Turkish bases for bombing runs against IS targets.
Biden also acknowledged the threat that Kurdish militants pose to Turkey, calling the PKK, or Kurdistan Workers' Party, "a terrorist group plain and simple." Ankara views its war on terror as a two-prong effort focused on Kurdish militants and IS jihadists who have established cells in Turkey and use the country as a gateway to Syria.

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