Conservative Blogger
Sunday, May 24, 2015
ABC spokeswoman in Stephanopoulos flap worked in Clinton White House
The ABC News spokeswoman who slow-walked The Washington Free Beacon’s request for comment on George Stephanopoulos’ undisclosed donations to the Clinton Foundation also worked in the Clinton administration.
Heather Riley -- spokeswoman for ABC News programs “Good Morning America” and “This Week” -- worked in the White House press office from 1997 to 2000, according to her LinkedIn profile, and is a member of the Facebook group “(Bill) Clinton Administration Alumni.”
The Free Beacon, a conservative-leaning publication, contacted ABC News on the afternoon of May 13 to request comment on George Stephanopoulos’s previously undisclosed donations to the Clinton Foundation.
“I was just forwarded your email about George. I’m going to send you something,” Riley emailed later that night, according to The Free Beacon. “Want to make sure you get it in time.”
Riley later told the Free Beacon that she would deliver a statement by 7 a.m. the next morning. However, the statement did not arrive until 9:40 a.m., about 15 minutes after POLITICO published its “scoop” about the donations.
White House records show that Riley’s duties included serving as a press contact for then-first lady Hillary Clinton.
The company and its charitable foundation have donated $20,000 to $50,000 to the Clinton Foundation, records show. The Rodale family contributed at least $5,000 to Hillary Clinton’s campaigns from 2005 to 2008.
Stephanopoulos was part of Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign and held several top posts in the Clinton administration including spokesman and senior adviser.
Final votes on Patriot Act, trade deal bill set dramatic stage for Congress’ return
The Senate’s failure to extend the USA Patriot Act will bring the legislation on NSA phone-record collection and other key surveillance activities perilously close to expiring on June 1, forcing senators to return early from recess for a rare Sunday session.
The Senate vote was just one of two this weekend that set the stage for dramatic showdowns on Capitol Hill in the coming weeks and months.
The GOP-led upper chamber passed bipartisan legislation Friday night to strengthen President Obama's hand in global trade talks. However, the legislation must now pass the Republican-led House, with help from Democrats because some conservative members oppose the legislation.
Speaker John Boehner supports the measure and says Republicans will do their part to pass it.
Dozens of House Republicans oppose the legislation either out of ideological reasons or because they are loath to enhance Obama's authority, especially at their own expense.
Senate and now House Democrats are showing little inclination to support legislation that much of organized labor opposes.
Meanwhile, the National Security Agency is starting to winding down its bulk collection of domestic-calling records in preparation for the Senate voting again against the legislation, according to the Justice Department, which says the collection takes time to halt.
The Senate went into the early hours on Saturday morning to vote on the legislation before leaving Washington for Memorial Day recess.
By the time senators broke for the holiday, they had blocked a House-passed bill and several short-term extensions of the key provisions in the Patriot Act.
The main stumbling block was a House-passed provision to end the NSA collecting the phone-call metadata and instead have the records remain with telephone companies subject to a case-by-case review.
McConnell warned against allows the NSA and other key surveillance programs under the act to expire.
However, he and other key Republican senators oppose the House approach, backed by officials who argued it is the best way for the United States to keep valuable surveillance tools.
Fellow GOP Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, also a 2016 presidential candidate, called the Senate's failure to allow the extension a victory for privacy rights.
"We should never give up our rights for a false sense of security," Paul said in a statement. "This is only the beginning -- the first step of many. I will continue to do all I can until this illegal government spying program is put to an end, once and for all."
The White House has pressured the Senate to back the House bill, which drew an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote last week and had the backing of GOP leaders, Democrats and the libertarian-leaning members.
But the Senate blocked the bill on a vote of 57-42, short of the 60-vote threshold to move ahead. That was immediately followed by rejection of a two-month extension to the existing programs. The vote was 54-45, again short of the 60-vote threshold.
McConnell repeatedly asked for an even shorter renewal of current law, ticking down days from June 8 to June 2. But Paul and other opponents of the post-Sept. 11 law objected each time.
At issue is a section of the Patriot Act, Section 215, used by the government to justify secretly collecting the "to and from" information about nearly every American landline telephone call. For technical and bureaucratic reasons, the program was not collecting a large chunk of mobile calling records, which made it less effective as fewer people continued to use landlines.
When former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the program in 2013, many Americans were outraged that NSA had their calling records. President Obama ultimately announced a plan similar to the USA Freedom Act and asked Congress to pass it. He said the plan would preserve the NSA's ability to hunt for domestic connections to international plots without having an intelligence agency hold millions of Americans' private records.
Since it gave the government extraordinary powers, Section 215 of the Patriot Act was designed to expire at midnight on May 31 unless Congress renews it.
Under the USA Freedom Act, the government would transition over six months to a system under which it queries the phone companies with known terrorists' numbers to get back a list of numbers that had been in touch with a terrorist number.
But if Section 215 expires without replacement, the government would lack the blanket authority to conduct those searches. There would be legal methods to hunt for connections in U.S. phone records to terrorists, said current and former U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. But those methods would not be applicable in every case.
Far less attention has been paid to two other surveillance authorities that expire as well. One makes it easier for the FBI to track "lone wolf" terrorism suspects who have no connection to a foreign power, and another allows the government to eavesdrop on suspects who continuously discard their cellphones in an effort to avoid surveillance.
Common enemy: Israel, Hamas face threat of ISIS in Gaza
HAIFA, Israel – Sworn enemies Israel and Hamas may have found the one thing that can unite them: The threat of ISIS taking over Gaza.
Hamas, the U.S.-designated terrorist organization which controls the Islamic enclave in Israel and which fought a vicious 50-day war against Israel last summer, is desperately trying to stop ISIS from gaining a foothold within its territory. In recent weeks, jihadi groups loyal to ISIS have exchanged gun and rocket fire with Hamas authorities, planted bombs in public buildings and threatened an all-out war with the Gaza government. Hamas reportedly blew up a mosque believed to be a base for ISIS loyalists and has detained significant numbers of suspects.
“In light of Hamas’ latest action, we renew our allegiance to [ISIS leader] Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi and call on him to strengthen his influence, to open up a war in Palestine in order to unite together in a war against the Jews and their accomplices,” a group calling itself Supporters of the Islamic State in Jerusalem said in a statement last month after the mosque in the central Gaza section of Deir Al-Balah was destroyed.
“Hamas is brutal enough and determined enough to meet that challenge.”The statement demanded that Hamas release all ISIS loyalists and was followed days later by a bombing near Hamas' security headquarters.
- Yoram Schweitzer, Institute for National Security Studies
ISIS has now expanded beyond Iraq and Syria and into Yemen, Libya, Egypt and Somalia. Although Palestinian leaders refuse to publicly acknowledge an ISIS presence threat in Gaza, the group’s black flag is now often seen there.
“I know that people from Hamas have expressed more and more the concept of long-range ‘hudna’ [truce] with Israel,” regional terror expert Yoram Schweitzer of the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies told FoxNews.com. “Because of the dire straits in Gaza as a consequence of the last operation there, Hamas has to carry the burden of caring for the people and is considering pushing for a kind of hudna in return for Israeli concessions.”
Late last month senior Hamas official Ahmad Yousef told Ma’an, the Palestinian news agency, that European officials were acting as intermediaries with Israel, but that things would only begin “moving ahead” once the new Israeli government was sworn in. That swearing in ceremony took place last Thursday evening.
“As you can imagine, we are following developments within the Gaza Strip and also in the Sinai Peninsula very, very closely, and not only us, also the Egyptian authorities,” Emmanuel Nahshon, spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Office, told FoxNews.com.
Hamas is under pressure from the densely populated strip's 1.8 million residents to rebuild following the damaging 2014 conflict. Billions in pledges from Arab nations have failed to materialize and a lack of jobs and basic services continues to plague Gaza. Many smuggling tunnels from the Sinai Peninsula, once a source of black market goods, have been blown up or flooded by Egyptian forces who say they have been used by ISIS and its affiliates to mount attacks from within Gaza.
While Israel could conceivably work with Hamas to stop ISIS, Egypt likely sees little difference between the two terrorist groups.
“Egypt sees Hamas as part of the Muslim Brotherhood which they see as their venomous enemy,” says Schweitzer. “They see Hamas playing a significant role in the hardship Egypt is enduring from the Sinai and they know that Hamas enables people from these organizations to find refuge in Gaza. They see Hamas as somebody who needs to be removed from power.”
It is Israel which has thrown Hamas a lifeline by sending increasing amounts of food and goods through the border crossings to alleviate the chronic shortages in Gaza. Reports of Hamas mulling a five-year truce with Israel in return for an easing of the blockade on the enclave have been circulating and appeared in regional media. Indications that Turkey, a staunch supporter of Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood has been acting as an intermediary, have not been denied by the Turks.
Some observers say, at least for now, Hamas is capable of putting down the threat from ISIS.
“I don’t think [ISIS or its affiliates] are a threat that Hamas cannot handle,” Schweitzer said. “Hamas is brutal enough and determined enough to meet that challenge.”
Tea Party affiliate FreedomWorks refocuses, changes to stay relevant in 2016
FreedomWorks, often considered the ideological brains behind the 2010 Tea Party wave, is trying to reinvent itself for the 2016 elections and beyond, even borrowing from the progressive playbook.
Chief Executive Officer Adam Brandon said Friday the group is refocusing its strategy -- from expanding its digital outreach and getting more involved in such torch-bearing issues as civil asset forfeitures and mandatory-sentencing reform to providing more financial support for conservative Capitol Hill lawmakers so they can keep challenging the Washington establishment.
“As the battle moves, we need to be able to participate in different ways,” Brandon said recently from the group’s Washington headquarters.
He and others say the Republican Party’s most conservative wing, particularly in the House, is under increasing pressure to go along with leadership or risk losing re-election money.
“I want to make it easy for you to win but not have to worry about K Street backing,” Brandon said.
Tea Party-backed Rep. Thomas Massie, elected in 2012, suspects he’s in that category.
He since voted against returning Ohio Rep. John Boehner as House speaker and he broke with GOP leaders when they avoided a standoff with President Obama over immigration reform.
Now, in the first quarter of 2015, Massie has collected just $1,000 from political action committees, or PACs, which funnel contributions to candidates from business, labor or ideological interests.
He and other conservative caucus members bluntly say the reason business contributions have fallen is that GOP leaders are retaliating.
"Those who don't go along to get along aren't going to get as many PAC checks," said Massie, making an allegation that Republican leadership flatly denies.
FreedomWorks was found in 2004 with the assistance of former GOP House Majority Leader Dick Armey as a conservative advocacy group that helped in campaigns and trained and mobilized volunteers.
However, the group didn’t come into real prominence until it helped organize the 2009 Tax Day protest and other Tea Party-type rallies that led to Republicans taking over the House in the 2010 midterms.
The other significant strategy change for Freedom Works is recent months is the group’s efforts to get “early money” to candidates -- much like Emily’s List has done with pro-choice female Democrats to encourage top talent to run and to attract more donors.
“If you jump, they’ll be plenty of water in the pool for you,” Brandon said of the strategy.
He and others thinks Emily’s List is now among the most influence PACs in politics.
This is not first time that FreedomWorks has announced a shift in direction since helping lead the anti-tax revolts and backing enough candidates touting that message to the help Republicans in the 2010 wave election.
As the victories piled up on election night, Brandon vowed to Slate.com that his group would now start holding newly-elected candidates to their less-government, less-taxes promises.
The entire Tea Party movement, in fact, has been under pressure to change over the years, amid arguments that related groups have repeatedly backed candidates incapable of winning general elections -- particularly in 2012 when GOP Senate candidates Todd Aiken, Missouri, and Richard Mourdock, Indiana, made controversial remarks about rape that cost them their races and hurt the Republican Party’s bid to take control of the Senate.
Brandon says FreedomWorks is pleased with the 2014 election results -- helping such Tea Party-endorsed candidates as Republican Ben Sasse win a Senate seat in Nebraska and creating competitive House races in such places as Washington state, where Republican and ex-NFL star Clint Didier lost by just 2,000 votes.
Still, a Tea Party-backed candidate lost in essentially every 2014 Senate primary in which a Democrat could have won the general election, including those in Georgia, Kentucky and North Carolina, and failed to unseat 77-year-old Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran, consider among the most vulnerable of 2014 incumbents.
FreedomWorks has had to form a “hard dollar” PAC, to raise the so-called early money.
Brandon said having to form nonprofits, PACs and Super PAC has been a time-consuming legal challenge, but with the new FreedomWorks PAC his group now has all of the tools while maintaining its core values.
“If you’re running (again) for dog catcher, our question is still ‘Did you cut the budget and catch more dogs,’ ” he said.
Joe Desilets, managing partner at the D.C.-based political consulting firm 21st & Main, says an ongoing concern is the proliferation of PACs being started by “any former candidate, campaign staffer, activist or consultant with access to an email or donor list” because they are overwhelming donors and their email in-boxes
“The enthusiasm and desire to get involved and have an impact on behalf of conservative candidates is great,” he said. “But it hurts the established and effective conservative organizations that all of these new groups want to emulate.”
Desilets also said groups that want to be effective in 2016 indeed must craft a more robust digital strategy that includes online ad buys and mobile campaigns, considering roughly 75 percent of Americans now use smartphones, with the percentage even higher among such key demographics as millennials, Hispanics and single women.
Brandon says FreedomWorks is focusing on just two or three 2016 Senate races and 10 to 15 House races.
The group has been eyeing Arizona GOP Rep. Matt Salmon to challenge incumbent Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain and Florida GOP Rep. Ron DeSantis for the Senate seat being vacated by 2016 Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio.
DeSantis earlier this month officially announced his Senate candidacy, and Salmon has yet to say anything about a potential Senate bid.
Protesters flood Cleveland streets after officer's acquittal
Try getting a JOB!
Police in riot gear made more than a dozen arrests Saturday as protesters stormed the streets of Cleveland after a judge found a white city police officer not guilty in the deaths of two unarmed black suspects killed in a barrage of police gunfire.
The protesters gathered in downtown Cleveland and west side neighborhoods after the acquittal of patrolmen Michael Brelo.
About 150 protesters marched down the middle of downtown Cleveland, temporarily blocking intersections as they chanted anti-police slogans.
The protesters, who were marching behind a large banner that said "Stop murder by police," passed by large crowds leaving a Cleveland Indians game and made downtown vehicle and pedestrian traffic even more congested.
Police tweeted they arrested a male for assault after he threw an object through a window, and the Northeast Ohio Media Group reported that three people were arrested near the Quicken Loans Arena , while officers showed protesters cans of pepper spray as they approached those being arrested. Some police were wearing riot gear.
An Ohio judge said in his written verdict delivered to a crowded courtroom Saturday that Brelo’s actions in the November 2012 shootings were justified because he believed that someone in the car containing Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams fired shots at police in the beginning, middle and end of the chase. Brelo is still on unpaid suspension while officials consider administrative charges against him.
"We will now review the testimony and evidence presented in the state trial" to determine if "additional steps are available and appropriate," the department said after the acquittal of Brelo on voluntary manslaughter charges.
Vanita Gupta, head of the department's civil rights division said the review is separate from its efforts to resolve a pattern of civil rights violations at the Cleveland police department. A report in December outlined a string of examples of excessive force, including officers who unnecessarily fired guns, hit suspects in the head with weapons, and punched and used Tasers on people already handcuffed.
The acquittal came at a time of nationwide tension among police and black citizens punctuated by protests over deaths of blacks at the hands of white officers -- and following a determination by the Justice Department that city police had a history of using excessive force and violating civil rights.
Before issuing his verdict, Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge John O'Donnell noted the recent unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore over the deaths of black suspects but said he would not "sacrifice" Brelo to an angry public if the evidence did not merit a conviction.
"Guilty or not guilty, the verdict should be no cause for a civilized society to celebrate or riot," he said.
Related Image
May 23, 2015: A protester is arrested after the acquittal of Michael Brelo, a patrolman charged in the shooting deaths of two unarmed suspects. (AP)
Community and city leaders braced for the possibility of unrest in response to the verdict, which came as investigators work toward making a decision on whether charges will be filed in the death of a black 12-year-old boy carrying a pellet gun who was shot by a white rookie officer late last year.
Shortly after the verdict was reached, about 30 sheriff's deputies stood in front of the courthouse bearing clear shields as protesters with bullhorns chanted. One demonstrator bowed his head with hands folded in front of the phalanx of deputies, praying in silence.
The deputies then moved inside the entrance of the justice center, and the plaza in front of the building was soon cordoned off.
Brelo, 31, faced as many as 22 years in prison had the judge convicted him on two counts of voluntary manslaughter.
O'Donnell spent nearly an hour summing up his conclusion, an involved explanation that included mannequins marked with the gunshot wounds that the two motorists suffered on Nov. 29, 2012.
O'Donnell said that while Brelo likely fired fatal shots in the final seconds of the encounter in a school parking lot, other officers fired fatal shots as well. Brelo could have been convicted of lesser charges, felonious assault, but O'Donnell determined his actions were justified by the circumstances of the chase, which included reports of shots being fired from the beat-up Chevy Malibu that Timothy Russell was driving.
Brelo sat stoically throughout the four-week bench trial, his parents often in the courtroom. Thirteen officers fired at a car with Russell and Malissa Williams inside after a long, high-speed chase, but only Brelo was charged criminally because prosecutors said he waited until the car had stopped and the pair no longer a threat to fire 15 shots through its windshield while standing on the hood of the car.
Russell, 43, and Williams, 30, were each shot more than 20 times. While prosecutors argued they were alive until Brelo's final salvo, medical examiners for both sides testified that they could not determine the order in which the fatal shots were fired.
Brelo has been on unpaid leave since he was indicted May 30, 2014.
The chase and shooting began when Russell's car backfired as he sped past Cleveland police headquarters. Police officers and bystanders thought someone inside had fired a gun. More than 100 Cleveland police officers in 62 marked and unmarked cars got involved in a pursuit that saw speeds reach 100 mph during the 22-mile-long chase.
Authorities never learned why Russell didn't stop. He had a criminal record including convictions for receiving stolen property and robbery and had been involved in a previous police pursuit. Williams had convictions for drug-related charges and attempted abduction. Both were described as mentally ill, homeless and addicted to drugs. A crack pipe was found in the car.
The shooting helped prompt a months-long investigation by the Justice Department, which concluded last December that the Cleveland police department had engaged in a pattern and practice of using excessive force and violating people's civil rights. The city and DOJ are currently negotiating a reform-minded consent decree that a federal judge will approve and independent monitors will oversee.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine at the conclusion of a probe by the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation said there had been a systemic failure within the command and control structure of the Cleveland police department during the chase. BCI turned over its findings to the Cuyahoga County prosecutor's office, which presented evidence to a grand jury that led to Brelo's indictment.
The grand jury also charged five police supervisors with misdemeanor dereliction of duty for failing to control the chase. All five have pleaded not guilty. No trial date has been set for the supervisors.
Two years after the deaths of Russell and Williams, a white officer fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice in a Cleveland park after police received a report of a man with a gun. Surveillance video showed the officer firing on Rice within two seconds of his patrol car skidding to a stop next to him.
In addition to the Rice case, the county prosecutor's office is looking into the death of a black woman who died in police custody while lying face first on the ground in handcuffs. The family of Tanisha Anderson, 37, has sued the city of Cleveland and the two police officers who subdued her. They say she panicked Nov. 12 when officers put her in the back of a patrol car after they'd responded to a call about Anderson having a mental health crisis.
Russell's sister, Michelle, said Brelo would ultimately face justice, despite the judge's decision. The city of Cleveland has paid the families of Russell and Williams a total of $3 million to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit.
"He's not going to dodge this just because he was acquitted," Michelle Russell said. "God will have the final say."
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