Erase all History Cartoon

Obama scolds heckler at gay pride reception, saying 'You're in my house'

WASHINGTON –  President Barack Obama took on a heckler head-on at a gay pride month reception at the White House Wednesday, scolding the protester for being disrespectful in "my house."
The heckler had interrupted Obama's remarks by protesting the detention and deportation of gay, lesbian and transgender immigrants.
The president responded, "Hold on a second." When the heckler persisted, Obama, flashing an exasperated look, countered, "OK, you know what?" Wagging his finger and shaking his head, Obama said, "No, no, no, no, no," repeating the word more than a dozen times.
As the heckler continued to talk over him, Obama took it up a notch.
"Hey. Listen. You're in my house," he said to laughter and woos from the crowd. "You know what? It's not respectful when you get invited to somebody. You're not going to get a good response from me by interrupting me like this. I'm sorry. I'm sorry ... Shame on you, you shouldn't be doing this."
In his remarks, Obama said that regardless of how the Supreme Court rules in an upcoming decision on gay marriage, there has been an undeniable shift in attitudes across the country. He said he's closely watching the decisions the high court will announce in the coming days, which include a case that could affirm the right of gay couples nationwide to marry.
The president singled out discrimination facing transgender Americans as an area where more progress needs to be made.

Debate over rebel flag widens to include all symbols of Confederacy

The debate over the rebel flag that began anew after last week's church shootings in Charleston, S.C., has morphed into a full-blown Confederate controversy.
While Stars and Bars have long been associated by many with slavery, the latest campaign to remove Confederate emblems has extended beyond the flag to statues, memorials, parks and even school mascots. Never has the debate over what symbolizes heritage and what stands for hate covered so much ground, as efforts to strip icons that have been part of the visual and cultural landscape of the South for decades are afoot at national, state and local levels.
In one Arkansas town, the school board voted unanimously Tuesday to ban the song "Dixie" for the next school year and phase out “Rebel,” the school’s mascot.
“It came to our attention that the public has been pretty upset about the Confederate flag, which has already been removed, the rebel mascot [and] the playing of the ‘Dixie,’” Fort Smith, Ark., school board member Susan McFerran told reporters after the board voted for the changes.

“They are part of our history and not all of our history is dandelions and butterflies.”
- Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C.

In Maryland, Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamentz is pushing a plan that would change the name of Baltimore's Robert E. Lee Park. A spokesman for Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake told The Associated Press she supports the name change and is willing to work with the county to find an appropriate alternative.
Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Tennessee have called for a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and early Ku Klux Klan leader, to be removed from an alcove outside the Senate chambers. The bust, with the words “Confederate States Army” engraved on it, has been at the state Capitol for decades.
A group of Kentucky officials, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, want to kick a statute of Confederate leader Jefferson Davis out of the state Capitol rotunda, and activists in Minnesota have demanded a lake named after John C. Calhoun, a senator and vice president from South Carolina who supported slavery, be re-christened.

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There's a new move to change the name of Baltimore's Robert E. Lee Park, named for the legendary Confederate general.

The battle flag of the Confederacy, long seen waving above state capitols, from front porches of homes and on memorabilia and garments throughout the South, was the first casualty of the movement fueled by church shooting suspect Dylann Roof's embrace of it and white supremacy. Photos of Roof posing with the flag litter a website which he is believed to have created to house his hateful manifesto against African-Americans.
National retailers Amazon.com, Walmart, Sears and Etsy this week all announced plans to remove merchandise depicting the Confederate battle flag.
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley called for lawmakers to remove the flag from public grounds, and in Alabama, Gov. Robert Bentley unilaterally ordered the immediate removal Wednesday of four different Confederate banners, including the battle flag, from an 88-foot-tall memorial that stands at the state Capitol entrance nearest to the governor’s office.

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Some are calling for statues like the one of Jefferson Davis, (l.), in Kentucky's state capitol, and Robert E. Lee, (r.), in Washington, to come down.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan opposes the use of the Confederate flag on the state's license plates, according to a spokeswoman for the Republican, and is in talks with the state's department of motor vehicles and attorney general to address the issue.
At the federal level, though, there’s now talk of whether Congress should remove statues with ties to the Confederacy from the U.S. Capitol. Among those are statues of Joe Wheeler of Alabama, who is wearing a Confederate military uniform with “CSA” emblazoned on his belt buckle. Another is of South Carolina leader Wade Hampton, leader of the Confederacy and Ku Klux Klan supporter.
But some are concerned that the snowballing effort to rid the nation of Confederate symbolism is a historical whitewash.
“They are part of our history and not all of our history is dandelions and butterflies,” Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., told Fox News. “A knee-jerk reaction is not helpful.”
He later asked, “Where does it stop? Especially if you start letting people define our history.”

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June 23, 2015: Confederate flag themed stickers are displayed at Arkansas Flag and Banner in Little Rock, Ark.

While some, like Mulvaney, have questioned whether the push to purge could wind up erasing an important part of America’s past, University of Alabama history professor Joshua Rothman, believes the distinction lies not in learning about the Confederacy but in how people choose to honor it.
“I don’t think there is a reasonable position anyone could take that says that the history of the Confederacy shouldn’t be talked about in a university or school or museum,” he told FoxNews.com, adding that the problem lies in celebrating the Confederacy, especially using taxpayer money.

 

 

 

 

 

Clinton aide worked on UAE project while at State Department

Hillary Clinton’s top aide Cheryl Mills held several outside roles, including a board position with a UAE-funded university in Abu Dhabi, while working as chief of staff and counselor at the State Department, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
After joining the State Department in the beginning of 2009, Mills continued to serve as general counsel for New York University for several months. She also sat on the board of the “NYU in Abu Dhabi Corporation,” the fundraising arm for the university’s UAE satellite campus. The school is bankrolled by the Abu Dhabi government and has been criticized by NYU professors and human rights activists for alleged labor abuses.
Mills resigned both positions in May 2009, according to a university spokesperson. Although she did not receive a direct salary from the Abu Dhabi board, she collected $198,000 over four months from NYU.
While the State Department told the Free Beacon that Mills did not start working as Clinton’s chief of staff until May 24, 2009, internal agency documents indicate she began months earlier.
Mills is identified as Clinton’s chief of staff in several U.S. diplomatic cables prior to May 2009. One confidential dispatch published by Wikileaks described a Feb. 5, 2009 meeting in Washington between Haitian President Rene Preval and Secretary Clinton.
“On the U.S. side, U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Janet Sanderson … Special Advisor Vicki Huddleston, and Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills joined the Secretary,” said the cable, which was sent from Hillary Clinton’s office to the U.S. embassy in Port au Prince on Feb. 11, 2009.

White House reportedly hid extent of Office of Personnel Management hack

The Obama administration reportedly concealed the true amount of information compromised by a cyberattack on the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) for several days after the initial disclosure of the hack, according to a published report.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the day after the White House admitted that hackers had breached personnel files, OPM publicly denied that the security clearance forms had been compromised despite receiving information to the contrary from the FBI. The administration did not say that security clearance forms had likely been accessed by the intruders until more than a week had passed.
A OPM spokeswoman denied the claims, telling the Journal the agency had been "completely consistent" in its reporting of the data breach.
The Journal, citing U.S. officials, reported that lengthy period between disclosures was the result of a decision taken by both White House and OPM officials to report the cyberattack as two separate breaches, one of the personnel files and one of the security clearance forms. That meant that rather than saying the hack may have compromised the information of approximately 18 million people, including some who have never worked for the government, OPM initially said that only about four million people were affected.
By contrast, the paper reports, FBI officials who had to speak to lawmakers about the incident, including director James Comey, defined the theft as the result of one breach.
On Wednesday, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz asked whether the true number of people affected could be as high as 32 million, and called for OPM Director Katherine Archuleta to step down.

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• Chaffetz: Data breach scares the living daylights out of me

"I think you are part of the problem," Chaffetz told Archuleta during a hearing. "That hurricane has come and blown this building down, and I don't want to hear about putting boards up on windows (now). It's time for you to go."
In her testimony, Archuleta said the estimate of 18 million people affected "refers to a preliminary, unverified and approximate number of unique Social Security numbers in the background investigations data ... It is a number I am not comfortable with."
However, the Journal reports that  in a private briefing with lawmakers Tuesday, a senior FBI official interjected and told Archuleta the number was based on OPM's own data.
Investigators believe that China was behind the cyberattack, which was discovered in April. If the security clearance forms were compromised, information about espionage operations could be exposed. Beijing has strongly denied any role in the hack.