Conservative Blogger
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Did Obama White House bully anti-Muslim preacher?
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| Why did White House bully Anti-Muslim Preacher? |
According to the report -- the White House directed Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to call Preacher Jones.
There were also discussions that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton might “issue another statement to distance the United States from the Pastor Jones video.”
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It was one of several action items involving the Obama administration’s efforts to blame the attack on a YouTube video that mocked Islam.
It’s not exactly clear why they were reaching out to Preacher Jones – because he had nothing to do with the YouTube video. And the report does not indicate whether they actually followed through with the telephone calls.
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If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were trying to find a fall guy – someone to blame other than the true culprits – Islamic radicals.
It was not the first time the Obama administration tried to strong-arm Preacher Jones.
The Washington Post reported that former Defense Secretary Robert Gates called the minister in 2010 to complain about a Koran burning event. Gates said the preacher was putting military lives in jeopardy.
A Defense Department spokesperson described the conversation to NPR:
"Secretary Gates reached out to Pastor Jones this afternoon. They had a very brief phone conversation during which the Secretary expressed his grave concern that going forward with the Quran burning would put at risk the lives of our forces around the world, especially those in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he urged the Pastor not to proceed with it."
Folks, I believe a very dangerous line separating church and state has been breached. The government has no authority to involve itself in the business of a church.
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Is burning a Koran despicable? Absolutely. But so is burning the American flag. And both are protected forms of free speech.
Did the Secretary of Defense call Black Lives Matter and tell them to stop burning the American flag?
Did anti-Christian artists get a phone call from the White House-- urging them not to submerge a crucifix in a jar of urine?
Now some of you might say Preacher Jones deserved to get that phone call. He deserved to be intimidated by government officials. Perhaps. But where does it stop? Where do you draw the line?
Because one day it might be your pastor who gets a phone call -- maybe from the attorney general -- telling him to stop preaching sermons about traditional marriage -- telling him those kinds of sermons put people in harm's way.
Where does it stop, folks? Where does it stop?
Todd Starnes is host of Fox News & Commentary, heard on hundreds of radio stations. His latest book is "God Less America: Real Stories From the Front Lines of the Attack on Traditional Values." Follow Todd on Twitter@ToddStarnes and find him on Facebook.
Democratic draft platform seeks DOJ probe of fossil fuel companies
The Democratic Party's draft platform calls for the Justice Department to join several state prosecutors in investigating whether fossil fuel companies misled the public on global warming -- marking an escalation in a controversial campaign that critics liken to censorship.
As first reported by Inside Climate News, the committee drafting the party platform inserted the measure last Friday.
The measure called on “the Department of Justice to investigate alleged corporate fraud on the part of fossil fuel companies who have reportedly misled shareholders and the public on the scientific reality of climate change," according to the committee website.
The proposal is the latest shot fired in a broader battle being waged by environmental groups and their allies in government against oil companies and others.
Oil giant ExxonMobil is the target of several investigations being led by state attorneys general. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman subpoenaed Exxon’s financial records and emails last year, and has indicated ExxonMobil is not the only energy company in his office’s crosshairs. Other state AGs -- including those in Massachusetts and California -- have launched different probes against the company, seeking to replicate the success of the federal government’s 1999 case against Big Tobacco.
The U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker, an independent, also issued a subpoena in March seeking 40 years' worth of Exxon communications with 90 conservative groups “and any other organizations engaged in research or advocacy concerning Climate Change or policies.”
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Fox News Poll: Clinton up by 6 points, 89 percent say 'hot-headed' describes Trump
Donald Trump has had a few rocky weeks on the campaign trail, and it shows in the latest Fox News Poll. Just over half of Republicans would rather have someone besides Trump as their nominee, and his support in the presidential ballot test has dropped seven points since May.
Democrat Hillary Clinton is up 44-38 percent over Trump in a head-to-head matchup. Earlier this month, Clinton had a three-point edge (42-39 percent). In May, Trump was up by three (45-42 percent). Clinton’s current lead is just inside the poll’s margin of sampling error.
The national poll, released Wednesday, finds she has a similar advantage when voters are asked about confidence in the candidates to make the “right” decisions for the country if they were president: 48 percent are at least somewhat confident Clinton would. It’s 42 percent for Trump.
In the matchup, Clinton is the choice among blacks (87-3 percent), women (51-32 percent), voters under age 45 (45-35 percent), and those earning less than $50,000 annually (52-30 percent).
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL POLL RESULTS
Trump leads among white evangelical Christians (66-18 percent), whites without a college degree (51-33 percent), gun owners (52-30 percent), whites (48-34 percent), men (46-36 percent), and independents (39-31 percent).
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The race is almost even among just those “extremely” or “very” interested in the election (45 Clinton to 43 Trump). This group went for Trump by four points in early June (45-41 percent).
Party unity is a trouble spot for Trump. Just 74 percent of Republicans back him over Clinton, down from 82 percent in May. For comparison, Mitt Romney lost despite garnering 93 percent support among Republicans in 2012. In addition, just over half of Republicans would prefer a different nominee (51 percent someone else vs. 48 percent Trump). And while most GOP voters describe Trump as intelligent, more than 7-in-10 feel he’s hot-headed and obnoxious. More on that later.
Eighty-three percent of Democrats support Clinton in the ballot test. That’s better than Trump does among Republicans, yet worse than the 92 percent backing President Obama received in 2012. By a 21-point margin, Democrats want Clinton (58 percent) as their party’s nominee over Bernie Sanders (37 percent).
Some 66 percent of Democrats who preferred Sanders are backing Clinton over Trump. By comparison, only 52 percent of Republicans who want someone else to lead their party support Trump over Clinton.
Twenty-four percent of Republicans lack confidence that Trump would make the right decisions for the country. Fourteen percent of Democrats feel that way about Clinton.
"The results here aren't disastrous for Trump given the troubles he's encountered the past few weeks,” says Republican pollster Daron Shaw, who conducts the Fox News Poll along with Democratic pollster Chris Anderson. “He's within striking distance. But he absolutely must combat the growing perception that he is temperamentally unsuited and intellectually unprepared to be president."
What words best describe the candidates? There are a couple things voters generally agree on, and that’s both Clinton and Trump are patriotic -- and lack honesty.
Clinton outperforms Trump by the widest margin on “experienced,” as 77 percent say that describes her, while just 34 percent feel the same of Trump.
Far more see Clinton (82 percent) than Trump (66 percent) as “intelligent,” and “sensible” (54 percent Clinton vs. 35 percent Trump).
About six-in-ten think “patriotic” fits each.
Clinton is still dogged by low honesty numbers, as a record low 30 percent think she’s “honest and trustworthy,” and 58 percent describe her as “corrupt.”
Trump doesn’t have much to brag about here either: just 34 percent describe him as “honest and trustworthy” and 45 percent say “corrupt” fits.
Most voters feel Trump is “hot-headed” (89 percent) and “obnoxious” (83 percent), while far fewer say those apply to Clinton (35 percent “hot-headed” and 45 percent “obnoxious”).
Less than half say the phrase “cares about people like me” describes Clinton (45 percent) and only about one third say it fits Trump (35 percent).
“While our polling shows a clear positive trend for Clinton, her six-point lead is notably small considering voters almost universally think Trump is hot-headed and obnoxious, and most think he’s inexperienced,” says Anderson.
“This race is nowhere close to breaking open, despite some huge perceived deficiencies in Trump’s character.”
Pollpourri
Libertarian Gary Johnson captures 10 percent in a hypothetical three-way vote. That causes both Clinton and Trump to lose ground, although for the most part she maintains her edge (41-36 percent). Another 14 percent is up for grabs.
Fully 92 percent of those backing Clinton in the two-way race also back her in the three-way matchup. For Trump, 89 percent stick with him.
The contest for the Congress looks similar to the presidential race. When voters are asked to choose between the Democratic and Republican candidates in their district, Democrats are up by five points, 46-41 percent.
The Fox News poll is based on landline and cellphone interviews with 1,017 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from June 26-28, 2016. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for all registered voters.
FEC Democrats voted to punish Fox News over debate changes
Democratic members of the Federal Election Commission, in a decision to be made public on Thursday, voted last month to punish Fox News over criteria changes for the network’s first Republican presidential primary debate – but were blocked by Republican commissioners.
Commissioner Lee Goodman, one of those who voted to block the move, confirmed the details of the vote to FoxNews.com.
He called the attempt to punish Fox News over the debate changes “astonishing” and described it as a move toward censorship.
“All press organizations should be concerned when the government asserts regulatory authority to punish and censor news coverage,” Goodman said in a statement.
The vote concerned changes made to the criteria for the Fox News-hosted GOP primary debate on Aug. 6, 2015 in Cleveland. For that debate, Fox News decided to alter the format – hosting two debates instead of one and expanding the first debate to include lower-polling candidates, as well as any candidate identified as such in national polls. Seven candidates ultimately participated in the first debate, and 10 participated in the prime-time event.
A complaint subsequently was filed with the FEC claiming those changes were tantamount to an illegal corporate contribution to the candidates on stage.
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The case ended on a split 3-3 vote, resulting in no action. Three commissioners concluded Fox News violated election law; two of the Democratic commissioners went a step further and voted to penalize the network. But because any enforcement action requires four votes, the case was dismissed.
While political debate rules have come before the FEC in the past, rarely has the commission come so close to penalizing a news outlet over the issue.
The commission in 2002 dismissed a complaint about debate rules that had been lodged against the Boston Globe and WBZ-TV. And years earlier, in 1980, the commission threatened an injunction against the Nashua Telegraph over a planned debate between George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan that excluded other candidates. Reagan then stepped in to pay the costs – and during that debate, famously said, “I am paying for this microphone.”
Until recently, the FEC had steered clear of threatening action over press-sponsored debates.
Goodman argued that such “editorial decisions” regarding debate rules should be free from FEC regulation. He suggested there is “no practical or logical difference” between hosting a debate with 17 candidates and interviewing 17 candidates.
“How could expanding debate news coverage from 10 to 17 candidates be against the law?” he said.
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
Supreme Court declines to hear religious liberty case
The Supreme Court on Tuesday narrowly rejected an appeal over whether a private pharmacy can be forced by the state to dispense the so-called "morning after" pill, in effect refusing to expand its look into a religious liberty fight and certain reproductive health services.
At issue is a 2005 Washington state order that a family-owned pharmacy in Olympia provide so-called emergency Plan B contraception -- including morning-after and week-after pills -- that the business owners equate to abortion, in violation of their closely-held religious beliefs.
While the official vote total was not released, at least three justices dissented on the decision not to intervene. Justice Samuel Alito strongly dissented, saying the signal from the court was clear: “Violate your sincerely held religious beliefs or get out of the pharmacy business.”
“If this is a sign of how religious liberty claims will be treated in the years ahead, those who value religious freedom have cause for great concern,” he wrote. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas would also have granted the case for review.
The pharmacists say, as a proposed accommodation, when a customer asks for one of these drugs, they would be referred to one of more than 30 pharmacies within a five-mile radius that willingly offer these drugs.
Washington officials say their law -- similar to ones in eight other states -- ensures patient access to the medication, regardless of an individual pharmacist's personal beliefs.
The justices earlier punted on a separate but related issue over the federal ObamaCare health coverage law.
In that case a group of religious nonprofits -- including a Catholic charity run by nuns -- sought an exemption to a mandate in the Affordable Care Act to pay for, or indirectly allow, birth control and other reproductive health coverage in their employee health plans.
The high court threw the case back to the lower courts for further review without deciding the larger legal and constitutional questions.
The Washington state case had been pending at the Supreme Court for several months.
The case is Stormans v. Wiesman (15-862).
Obama administration pressed to deport illegal immigrant ex-cons
More than 2,000 illegal immigrants were turned loose on American streets after serving prison sentences last year - often because their home countries refused to take them back - and many subsequently committed crimes including rape and murder, a key lawmaker charged Monday.
The claim, by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, comes a week after a federal audit blamed the Department of Homeland Security and an uncooperative Haiti for an illegal immigrant being freed to kill a Connecticut woman.
Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, called on the Obama administration to put renewed pressure on countries that won’t take back their own criminals after they have been ticketed for deportation.
“Dangerous criminals, including murderers, are being released every day because their home countries will not cooperate in taking them back,” Grassley wrote in a June 27 letter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.
“Many times, these individuals have criminal histories in addition to entering the country illegally or overstaying their visa.”
Illegal immigrants convicted of crimes typically must serve all or part of their prison sentences in the U.S., and then are sent home under diplomatic agreements between the U.S. and other countries.
In 2015, said Grassley, some 2,166 individuals were released in the United States and not deported either because their countries would not readmit them or the U.S. government did not even try. In the two preceding years, more than 6,100 inmates slated for deportation were released within the U.S., Grassley said.
Some 23 countries are labeled as uncooperative, with the five worst being Cuba, China, Somalia, India, and Ghana, and U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is monitoring another 62 nations where cooperation is strained, Grassley said.
“This is a serious problem that has been festering for years, but is getting worse as countries realize that they can get away with just refusing to accept back their citizens who are criminals,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of Policy Studies for the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies.
“What is equally frustrating is that the Obama administration has continuously refused to use the tools that Congress has provided and the leverage that we have with many of the recalcitrant countries, even as the roster of victims from these criminal aliens grows longer every month.”
There are a number of horrific cases involving victims of criminal aliens, Vaughan noted, including one highlighted by The Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General last week. That report examined the circumstances that led to the murder of 25-year-old Casey Chadwick by Haitian national Jean Jacques, and found the agency’s overwhelmed Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau should have booted Jacques from the U.S. prior to the killing.
In Jacques’ case, Haiti denied his entry three times when Immigration and Customs Enforcement tried to deport him, claiming there was no proof he was a Haitian citizen.
Haiti refused to allow U.S. officials to obtain his birth certificate, and a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court decision limits how long immigration officials can detain people without deporting them. Jacques, who was held for a total of 205 days, was released.
A second high-profile case highlighted by both Grassley and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., demonstrates the Obama administration’s failure to deport criminal illegal immigrants to cooperative nations. It occurred June 13, when Johnny Josue Sanchez allegedly murdered five people in Los Angeles by intentionally setting fire to the building where they were sleeping.
Border Patrol agents had apprehended Sanchez, a Honduras citizen in the U.S. illegally, in November 2012, and transferred him to the custody of ICE, but he was released a week later after ICE noted Sanchez did not have a criminal history or previous immigration violation.
Since entering the country, Sanchez has been arrested on multiple charges, including in January 2016 for domestic violence, and again in May and June 2016 just days before the murders, but ICE did not detain him or place him in removal proceedings, Grassley and Goodlatte said. Sanchez has been charged with five counts of murder and could be sentenced to the death penalty.
Asked for comment by FoxNews.com, ICE Western Regional Communications Director/Spokesperson Virginia Kice said, ”Following his arrest by local authorities earlier this week, ICE conducted a follow-up review of Mr. Sanchez’s case. The review showed that, for unknown reasons, Mr. Sanchez was never placed in immigration proceedings, although the others arrested with him were. ICE’s inquiry into to matter is continuing.”
“These are preventable, needless crimes that American communities should not have to put up with,” Vaughan said.
One of the worst offending countries is Cuba. More than 35,000 Cubans, including 28,000 who are convicted criminals, have been ordered deported but remain on U.S. soil, a higher number of non-departed criminals than any other country except for Mexico, according to Vaughan.
She suggested that DHA could work with the State Department, which could withhold visas for offending countries until they cooperated.
Keeping illegal immigrants who have already committed violent crimes puts Americans at unnecessary risk, said Claude Arnold, retired special agent in charge for ICE's Los Angeles bureau of Homeland Security Investigations, who also was a deportation officer handling a high volume of criminal alien cases involving countries that did not want to take back their citizens.
“We have enough problems with our own criminals. We should not have to hold on to criminals from other countries indefinitely,” Arnold said.
Grassley said Congress addressed this problem when it amended the Immigration and Nationality Act to require the Secretary of State to discontinue granting visas to a country upon receiving notice from the Department of Homeland Security that the country has denied or is unreasonably delaying accepting a citizen, subject, national or resident of that country.
“This tool has been used only once, in the case of Guyana in 2001, where it had an immediate effect, resulting in obtaining cooperation from Guyana within two months,” Grassley said.
Grassley told Johnson he wants answers as to why the DHS is not using the sanctions authority to get full cooperation, saying he is frustrated with the “inadequacy” of the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to persuade recalcitrant countries to cooperate.
“Lives are being lost, the public’s safety is at risk, and American families are suffering,” Grassley said. “It cannot continue.”
“Although the majority of the countries in the world adhere to their international obligation to accept the timely return of their citizens, ICE has confronted unique challenges with those countries that systematically refuse or delay the repatriation of their nationals,” ICE spokesperson Jennifer Elzea told FoxNews.com.
“Despite ICE’s continued efforts, a number of factors constrain ICE’s ability to improve the level of repatriations to those nations. Such factors include: limited diplomatic relations with some countries; the countries’ own internal bureaucratic processes, which foreign governments at times rely upon in order to delay the repatriation process; and foreign governments that simply do not view repatriation as a priority.”
Clinton claims House Benghazi report ‘found nothing,’ says time to ‘move on’
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| New report contradicts Clinton's assertions about Benghazi |
The report released Tuesday morning pointedly blamed a “rusty bureaucratic process” for the Obama administration’s slow-moving response the night of the attack. The report said that despite orders from President Obama and then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to deploy assets in response to the attack on the compound to aid Ambassador Chris Stevens, his staff and security personnel, the first military force did not do so until more than 13 hours after the attack started.
Nonetheless, Clinton and her allies worked to sweep aside the committee’s damning, 800-page report, attempting to cast the investigation as nothing more than a political exercise.
“I understand that after more than two years and $7 million dollars spent by the Benghazi committee, out of taxpayer funds, it had to today report it had found nothing, nothing to contradict” prior findings, said Clinton, who was campaigning in Denver.
In Washington, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest echoed her remarks.
“There’s only one remaining question, and it’s simply this: is the RNC going to disclose the in-kind contribution that they have received from House Republicans today,” he said, claiming the investigation was meant to “tear down Secretary Clinton’s poll numbers.”
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“Read the report,” Gowdy repeatedly said.
“You can read this report in less time than our fellow citizens were taking fire and fighting for their lives on the rooftops and in the streets of Benghazi,” he also said in a written statement.
Meanwhile, accusations were flying on both sides of the aisle as the document became an inevitable political football on the 2016 field.
The Republican Party said the report demonstrates a "politically-motivated cover up" by Clinton and the administration.
Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, did not immediately respond to the report -- but later weighed in on Twitter.
"Benghazi is just anotherHillary Clinton failure. It just never seems to work the way it's supposed to with Clinton," he tweeted.
Clinton and her campaign dismissed the document outright.
"The Republicans on the House Benghazi Committee are finishing their work in the same, partisan way that we've seen from them since the beginning,” Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said in a written statement. “In refusing to issue its report on a bipartisan basis, the Committee is breaking from the precedent set by other Congressional inquiries into the Benghazi attacks.”
The report faulted the Obama administration for a range of missteps before, during and after the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya that led to the deaths of Stevens, foreign service officer Sean Smith and former Navy SEALs Ty Woods and Glen Doherty.
The report said one anti-terrorism security team known as the FAST unit sat waiting for three hours in Rota, Spain, as Marines changed “in and out of their uniforms four times,” and even debated whether they should carry personal weapons, according to one witness. All together, the report said, “it would take nearly 18 hours” for that team to move.
The report described a web of internal debates and hold-ups, including apparent State Department guidance that “Libya must agree to any deployment,” though Panetta would later say Libya approval was not necessary.
And while various officials debated how to proceed — and U.S. personnel were under attack at two sites in Benghazi — the report said Clinton and other officials were occupied with pushing a narrative that an anti-Islam YouTube video was the reason for the attack, a claim the administration later retracted.
The report also said Clinton told the Egyptian prime minster they knew the attack had nothing to do with the film and was a planned attack – despite statements being made by her and others referencing the video.
At the press conference, Gowdy and other GOP lawmakers lamented that none of the assets placed on the ready by Obama and Paneta were ordered to Benghazi.
“Nothing was ever coming to Benghazi,” Gowdy said.
Lawmakers contrasted the "heroism" of those on the ground with the discussions in Washington. Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., described the D.C. attitude as "near fecklessness." He said, "They were more concerned about how they’re going to offend the Libyan government than how this rescue is going to take place.”
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus blamed Clinton outright, saying she was “in charge, knew the risks and did nothing.”
“Together the report’s findings make clear we cannot afford to let Hillary Clinton be our next commander-in-chief,” he said. Appearing on MSNBC, Gowdy said Democrats “will be shocked when they read the report, if they do bother to read the report.”
The report also showed:
- During a White House meeting convened roughly three hours into the attack, “much of the conversation focused on the video.”
- The forces that came to evacuate State Department and CIA officers that night were not fellow Americans, but a secret unit of former military officers from the Qaddafi regime, which the Obama administration had helped overthrow.
- “Security deficiencies plagued the Benghazi Mission compound in the lead-up to September 2012.”
- Panetta told the committee “an intelligence failure” occurred, while former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell also acknowledged an intelligence failure.
Special Forces soldier denied Medal of Honor suggests system may be 'broken'
A Green Beret credited with fighting off Taliban attackers in Afghanistan spoke out Monday in his first interview since the Army denied his commanders' recommendation for a Medal of Honor, awarding him a Silver Star instead.
"I kind of have a lot of trust in the system, but if somebody says it’s broken, maybe it is," Staff Sgt. Earl D. Plumlee told The Washington Post. "But I'm always leery of decisions like this getting reversed."
He said senior commanders in Afghanistan -- including Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, now Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- wrote that he deserved the Medal of Honor, but the Army's Senior Decorations Board recommended the Silver Star, an award considered two levels lower. Army Secretary John McHugh approved the Silver Star.
Plumlee rushed to the site of a car bombing outside a coalition military base in central Afghanistan in the summer of 2013, the Post reported. As many as 10 armed Taliban attackers reportedly tried storming Forward Operating Base Ghazni through a damaged wall. At least one attacker detonated a suicide vest.
Troops including Plumlee returned fire. One soldier died and other troops were injured, the newspaper added. Plumlee said he later helped the wounded receive medical aid.
Other troops received Silver Stars, including a posthumous award for Staff Sgt. Michael Ollis, who died in the attack.
Plumlee said some of his friends had a "bitter" reaction to hearing that the Army opted to give him the Silver Star instead of the Medal of Honor. “I think there are plenty of Medal of Honor recipients out there whose actions surpassed mine. But I think a downgrade to the Distinguished Service Cross wouldn’t have got everyone stirred up."
The Distinguished Service Cross is one level below the Medal of Honor. It was unclear why the Army's leadership did not select that award for Plumlee, the Post added.
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
DOJ to institute mandatory bias training
Thousands of Justice Department workers soon will receive mandatory training developed by a controversial group in order to eliminate “implicit biases” in their law enforcement judgment, Reuters reported Monday, citing DOJ officials.
More than 33,000 federal agents and prosecutors are set to get the training, which will begin in 2017, though Department of Homeland Security employees are exempt. Attorney General Loretta Lynch is scheduled to announce the program in Phoenix on Tuesday, a DOJ official told Reuters.
“Implicit bias also presents unique challenges to effective law enforcement, because it can alter where investigators and prosecutors look for evidence and how they analyze it without their awareness or ability to compensate,” Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said in a memo obtained by Reuters.
The DOJ decision follows the examples of many local police departments that instituted similar bias training in the wake of several protests over racially-charged police actions that gained national attention.
The bias training was largely developed by the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington think tank which recently came under fire from law enforcement groups for its recommendations on use-of-force situations, including suggestions such as imagining public perception.
“We’re not going to stand by and let police officers be sacrificed on the altar of political correctness,” Executive Director of the Fraternal Order of Police Jim Pasco told CBS in February.
But despite police advocates protesting previous PERF proposals, Yates said DOJ felt the need to start the federal training following its implementation at lower levels.
“The program has been so well-received by our state and local counterparts, we thought it was something we should be offering to our federal agents, frankly, to get our own house in order,” she told Reuters.
Yates, who will have to undergo the training herself, said she hopes the DOJ initiative catches on with other federal departments.
In a similar vein, the Justice Department had previously released guidance to combat gender bias in relation to sex assault and domestic violence cases.
Speaker Ryan implies he would have voted in favor of Brexit
If House Speaker Paul Ryan was British, he might have been celebrating on June 23.
The Republican leader implied Monday that he would have supported the campaign to leave the European Union because their argument for leaving embodied American values.
“I can’t say I’m surprised because people want self-government, they want sovereignty, they want self-determination, and I can’t say that I would feel differently if I were a citizen of Great Britain when you have people from other countries regulating your country, writing your laws,” Ryan told Wisconsin’s WGTD radio station. “I can clearly relate to the thinking behind the Brexit vote.”
The WGTD interview was consistent with his initial statement the day after British voters shocked the world by voting to leave the EU. Ryan said he respected and understood the UK’s decision to leave because it aligned with the “very important” American principles of sovereignty, self-determination, and government by consent.
He also reaffirmed Monday that “what is important for us as Americans is to show solidarity with the people of Great Britain, to demonstrate that they’re still our ally… Our special relationship is intact.”
President Obama and Hillary Clinton have been vocal about their opposition to the Brexit movement in the past.
Ryan joins his party’s presumptive nominee Donald Trump in supporting the majority of British voters on their move toward autonomy.
More Clinton emails released, including some she deleted
An additional 165 pages of emails from Hillary Clinton's time at the State Department surfaced Monday, including nearly three dozen that the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee failed to hand over last year that were sent through her private server.
The latest emails were released under court order by the State Department to the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch. The batch includes 34 new emails Clinton exchanged through her private account with her deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin. The aide, who also had a private emailaccount on Clinton's home server, later gave her copies to the government.
The emails were not among the 55,000 pages of work-related messages that Clinton turned over to the agency in response to public records lawsuits seeking copies of her official correspondence. They include a March 2009 message where the then-secretary of state discusses how her official records would be kept.
"I have just realized I have no idea how my papers are treated at State," Clinton wrote to Abedin and a second aide. "Who manages both my personal and official files? ... I think we need to get on this asap to be sure we know and design the system we want."
In a blistering audit released last month, the State Department's inspector general concluded Clintonand her team ignored clear internal guidance that her email setup violated federal records-keeping standards and could have left sensitive material vulnerable to hackers.
The audit also cited a then-unreleased copy of a November 2010 email Clinton sent Abedin in which the secretary discussed using a government email account, expressing concern that she didn't want "any risk of the personal being accessible."
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Before providing her correspondence, Clinton and her lawyers withheld and subsequently deleted tens of thousands of messages that she claimed were personal, such as emails about her daughter's wedding plans, family vacations, yoga routines and condolence notes.
With the new release Monday, more than 50 work-related emails sent or received by Clinton have since surfaced that were not among those she provided.
Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon on Monday repeated past statements that Clinton had provided "all potentially work-related emails" that were still in her possession when she received the 2014 request from the State Department.
Fallon has declined to say whether Clinton deleted any work-related emails before they were reviewed by her legal team.
Dozens of the emails sent or received by Clinton through her private server were later determined to contain classified material. The FBI has been investigating for months whether Clinton's use of the private email server imperiled government secrets. Agents recently interviewed several of Clinton's top aides, including Abedin.
As part of the probe, Clinton turned over the hard drive from her email server to the FBI. It had been wiped clean, and Clinton has said she did not keep copies of the emails she choose to withhold.
In a report released Monday by Democrats on the House select panel probing the 2012 attacks on a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, Republican congressional investigators asked questions about Clinton'suse of the private email server in interviews with her close aides.
Abedin told interviewers that she was aware of Clinton's heavy use of private emails from the start and that Clinton continued a practice that she had developed as a U.S. senator for New York and as a 2008 presidential candidate. "It was a natural progression from what she was doing previously, and she continued to do so."
Asked repeatedly who serviced Clinton's private server in the basement of her New York home, Abedin identified Justin Cooper, a technology staffer at that time for former President Bill Clinton, and Bryan Pagliano, a State Department technology official who is cooperating with an FBI investigation ofClinton's private server under an immunity deal with prosecutors. Abedin was hazy about Pagliano's role at the agency and his private work overseeing Clinton's server in New York.
Pagliano, who previously worked for Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination and declined to answer the committee's questions. In a sworn deposition last week, Pagliano also refused to answer questions posed by lawyers from Judicial Watch, including who paid for the system and who else at the State Department used email accounts on it. Pagliano also would not answer whether he discussed setting up a home server with Clinton prior to her tenure as secretary of state, according to a transcript.
Other State Department officials told congressional investigators that Clinton never responded to internal offers to set her up with an official State account and an agency computer. Patrick Kennedy, the undersecretary for management at the State Department, said Clinton did "not know how to use a computer to do email. So it was never set up."
House GOP Report: Despite eyewitness accounts, Clinton, administration pushed video explanation for Benghazi
EXCLUSIVE – The claim that the fatal 2012 Benghazi terrorist attacks were sparked by an anti-Muslim video was crafted in Washington by Obama administration appointees and reflected neither eyewitness nor real-time reports from the Americans under siege, according to the final report of the GOP-led Benghazi Select Committee.
The GOP report, released Tuesday, followed by less than a day a report by the Democrats on the panel saying that security at the Benghazi, Libya facility was “woefully inadequate” but former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton never personally denied any requests from diplomats for additional protection.
According to portions of the Republican report reviewed by Fox News, one U.S. agent at the American outpost in Benghazi, whose name was withheld for security reasons, told the committee he first heard “some kind of chanting.”
Then that sound was immediately followed by “explosions” and “gunfire, then roughly 70 people rushing into the compound with an assortment of “AK-47s, grenades, RPG’s … a couple of different assault rifles,” the agent said.
In addition, a senior watch officer at the State Department's diplomatic security command described the Sept. 11, 2012, strikes as "a full on attack against our compound.”
When asked whether he saw or heard a protest prior to the attacks, the officer replied, "zip, nothing, nada," according to the Republican majority report.
“None of the information coming directly from the agents on the ground in Benghazi during the attacks mentioned anything about a video or a protest. The firsthand accounts made their way to the office of the Secretary through multiple channels quickly …,” the report concluded.
U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, foreign service officer Sean Smith and former Navy Seals Ty Woods and Glen Doherty, were killed in the attacks.
Five days later, then-United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice went on every national Sunday talk show. She told Fox News Sunday, “What sparked the recent violence was the airing on the Internet of a very hateful, very offensive video that has offended many people around the world.”
The GOP committee report also identified for the first time a White House meeting that was convened roughly three hours into the attack and included deputies to senior Cabinet members and Clinton.
Stevens was missing at the time. But the report found “much of the conversation focused on the video (which) is surprising given no direct link or solid evidence existed connecting the attacks in Benghazi and the video at the time ….”
The report found that “five of the 10 action items from the rough notes of the 7:30pm meeting reference the video.”
Unlike the Usama bin Laden raid in 2011, in which Clinton, President Obama and his national security team watched events unfold from the Situation Room, they never gathered for Benghazi.
Clinton issued the only statement that night from the administration, following the White House meeting. It read in part: “Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet.”
However, Clinton said something very different privately.
In an email provided to the Select Committee, Clinton told daughter Chelsea, “Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al Queda-like [sic] group.”
Clinton also told Egypt’s prime minister the following day: “We know that the attacks in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack -- not a protest.”
Kansas GOP Rep. Mike Pompeo, a Benghazi committee member, told Fox News in advance of the report’s release that the report is new and significant because it’s the first to include interviews from “everybody on the ground” in Benghazi.
More than 30 people’s lives were at risk that night, and the majority worked at the secret CIA annex in Benghazi.
Pompeo also said the findings show “it’s unambiguous the administration knew immediately it was a terror attack. And the story of fog of war was known to be false immediately by everyone in the administration.”
Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has seen her campaign plagued by questions about whether she and the rest of the State Department provided adequate security for Americans before the attacks and about why the administration continued to tell Americans the attacks were inspired by the video.
Committee Republicans say the deputies’ meeting, in which Clinton was involved, on the night of the Benghazi attack shows she’s not ready for the so-called “3 a.m. call.”
The report interviewed more than 80 witnesses previously not called before Congress to testify.
Among them was Ben Rhodes, the president’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, who with political adviser David Plouffe prepped Rice for her national TV appearances claiming the video was responsible for the terrorist attack.
Rice said her statements were based on the best available information, but nobody from the intelligence community such as the CIA director or the Director of National Intelligence briefed Rice. That was done by the political appointees.
In fact, a Sept. 14, 2012 memo from Rhodes included the subject line: "RE: PREP Call with Susan: Saturday at 4:00 pm ET."
The email was sent to a dozen members of the administration's inner circle, including key members of the White House communications team such as then-Press Secretary Jay Carney, who also pushed the video narrative in the days after the attacks.
In the email, Rhodes specifically draws attention to the anti-Islam Internet video, without distinguishing whether the Benghazi attack was different from protests elsewhere, including one day earlier in Cairo.
The Rhodes email, which was a catalyst for the Select Committee, was first obtained by Judicial Watch through a federal court lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act.
The email lists the following two goals, among others: "to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video and not a broader failure of policy” and “to reinforce the President and Administration's strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges."
Rhodes was the same official who signed off on Clinton’s statement the night of the attack linking the video to Benghazi.
The report found the post attack intelligence analysis had errors, contradicting the eyewitness accounts that night, and it alleges the administration latched onto the faulty analysis to defend and justify their misleading statements to the public.
There were in fact two sets of talking points – the White House version by Rhodes and the one by the CIA. When editing the CIA's version, Deputy Director Michael Morell knew his personnel on the ground disputed the protest analysis, but he gave the final say to his analysts in Washington, thousands of miles away.
Monday, June 27, 2016
Trump camp scrambles to shape up before GOP convention
Republicans are sprinting to shape up Donald Trump's presidential campaign before the party's national convention in three weeks, even as leading members of the party carry a deep antipathy or outright opposition to his claim on the GOP nomination.
His campaign chairman said Sunday there's a hiring spree in 16 states and the campaign is working with the Republican National Committee to solidify other matters. Paul Manafort said Trump is not all that involved in the race to organize an offensive against Democrat Hillary Clinton and catch up to her massive fundraising advantage.
"The good thing is we have a candidate who doesn't need to figure out what's going on (inside the campaign ) in order to say what he wants to do," Manafort said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "We have our campaign plans in place. We have our budgets in place."
What Manafort described as a "new phase" for the campaign -- a shift from the primaries to the general election -- was a forced reshuffling of an effort hobbled for weeks by infighting, Trump's statements about a judge's ethnicity and a massive fund raising deficit to Clinton's cash-raising Goliath. Trump began June with $1.3 million in the bank, less campaign cash than many congressional candidates. The $3 million he collected in May donations is about one-tenth what Clinton raised.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday that Trump can't win the presidency unless he can compete with Clinton on the financial front.
"He needs to catch up, and catch up fast," the Kentucky Republican said on ABC's "This Week."
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A few hundred delegates to the Republican National Convention are pushing to change the rules and make it possible for them to vote for someone other than Trump.
Many congressional Republicans are skipping the gathering in Cleveland altogether, the latest being Rep. Mia Love, R-Utah, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. Former presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush are not attending. And 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney, one of Trump's most outspoken Trump critics, has opted to spend July 10 through July 21 elsewhere.
Trump has said he doesn't want support from them, but also groused that overall support from Republican leaders has been lacking.
On the matter of staffing, there's evidence the Trump campaign is having trouble attracting some political veterans who are reluctant to sign on to such a late-starting and tumultuous campaign.
McConnell refused to say on Sunday whether Trump is qualified to be president. And he suggested that the GOP platform would not reflect Trump's ideas, including restrictions on Muslim immigration to the U.S.
"It's my expectation that the platform will be a traditional Republican platform, not all that different from the one we had four years ago," McConnell replied.
With just three weeks to go until the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, the Trump campaign and the RNC are laboring to set up staff in what Manafort said were 16 states in which the campaign aims to compete heavily. He said the campaign will announce more about staffing this week, an effort to reassure people that Trump's unorthodox campaign is viable.
On Sunday, Manafort sought to calm the angst, describing a partnership between Trump's campaign operation and the Republican National Committee that goes beyond the RNC's traditional role of raising money for the GOP nominee. He said the transition to the general election is complete -- but the details have not necessarily been made public.
"We are fully now integrated with the Republican National Committee," Manafort said. He said this week the campaign will announce "people who are taking over in major positions in our national campaign, as well as in our state campaigns. We're organized in all 16 states that we're going to be targeting as battleground states."
McConnell and other Republicans said they got the first glimmers of reassurance this week when Trump fired former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski in what Trump described as a change of direction from the GOP primaries to the general election. Lewandowski was at the center of the campaign's most corrosive internal battles, which Trump allowed to fester for months.
Man featured in Elizabeth Warren's anti-Trump ad voted for Trump
Michael Levin’s photogenic, mixed-race family appears straight from central casting for the modern American middle-class family, seemingly the perfect choice to be featured in Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s video for MoveOn attacking presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Just one problem: Levin is not anti-Trump. In fact, he voted for the billionaire businessman in the Massachusetts primary.
“On Monday I got a text from a friend who said, ‘Hey, I just saw you in the new Warren video attacking Trump.’ And I thought, ‘You've got to be kidding me,’” Levin told "Fox and Friends" on Sunday. “I watched the video, and to my shock and surprise, there I was.”
Levin and his family are featured in two clips about 2:30 into the Internet video. In the first, he’s helping his daughter strap on a bicycle helmet. In the second, Levin and his wife are shown gazing into the distance. Warren’s voiceover during the clips declares: “They pay their fair share.”
Anything Levin pays comes from his job as a writer. He’s contributed to The New York Daily News, Politico, The Huffington Post, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. He told "Fox and Friends" that he's written about Trump and 10 seconds of research would have revealed his actual feelings about the Manhattan mogul.
“I’m certainly not anti-Trump,” he said.
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“The little girl you saw in that video actually came with me to the polls with her siblings to watch me vote for him,” Levin said.
So how did Massachusetts' Warren and MoveOn get it wrong? Levin said they simply never asked him. The clip, he said, originated from an Al Jazeera special several years ago about the American family which he agreed to be part of. The Al Jazeera logo is still visible in the lower left corner of the MoveOn video.
“And apparently it's still up on YouTube,” Levin said. “And I think the Warren people just googled ‘American Dream,’ found us, and said, ‘What a nice mixed-race couple. They're probably sort of working-class people.’”
Levin said he hasn’t been contacted by Warren since the video hit the web.
“There were no such calls, and I only found out after the video had gone viral,” he said. “I think about 12 million people have now seen me actually assenting – or appearing to assent – to her position on Trump.”
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