Wisconsin Democrat running to succeed Paul Ryan apologizes for DUI, other arrests

Randy Bryce, a union worker and Democrat, is vying for the U.S. House seat that will be vacated by House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.  (Facebook)

A Wisconsin Democrat running to succeed retiring U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan has been arrested nine times, including a 1998 arrest for drunken driving, according to reports.
Randy Bryce, a union worker who uses the nickname “Iron Stache,” apologized Friday in a message on his website, titled "Twenty years ago," calling the DUI arrest “dumb” and “inexcusable.”
Bryce has built a national following and fundraising base in his quest to replace the retiring Ryan.
"I was immature and made a horrible, thoughtless decision," Bryce said of the arrest in Michigan.

"I was immature and made a horrible, thoughtless decision."
- Randy Bryce, Wisconsin Democrat running for a U.S. House seat.

After having his license suspended following the 1998 arrest, Bryce was arrested three more times for driving with a suspended license and registration in Wisconsin, CNN reported.
Bryce has been arrested a total of nine times, including in 2011 and earlier this year while protesting policies of Ryan and Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson.
Republicans pounced on the news.
"Randy Bryce may have the longest rap sheet of any candidate to ever run for Congress in Wisconsin," said Chris Martin, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. "Who would've known that when Randy Bryce said he has experience with iron that he was talking about a jail cell?"

"Randy Bryce may have the longest rap sheet of any candidate to ever run for Congress in Wisconsin. Who would've known that when Randy Bryce said he has experience with iron that he was talking about a jail cell?"
- Chris Martin, spokesman, National Republican Congressional Committee

News of the drunken driving and related arrests comes after previously reported problems for Bryce that included being 2 1/2 months delinquent on child support to his ex-wife in 2015 and taking nearly two years to pay it off.
Bryce, who had raised about $4.8 million for the 1st Congressional District race through March, faces Janesville teacher Cathy Myers in the Aug. 14 primary.
CNN reported that Bryce was arrested for marijuana possession, property damage, trespassing and theft in December 1991 on his 27th birthday. The theft and trespassing charges were dropped. Court records dating that far back are unavailable.
Bryce's campaign spokeswoman, Julia Savel, told CNN that Bryce doesn't remember the court's decision, though he says he didn't pay any fine or serve time and believes the charges were dropped.
He was arrested in April 1998 for operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol in Schoolcraft County in rural Michigan.
Bryce initially pleaded guilty, but a warrant was issued for his arrest after he failed to appear in court.
Bryce appeared in court in March 2003, where he was sentenced to 65 days in jail. The judge suspended the sentence with credit for one day served in jail and $850 in fines.
Bryce was also arrested in 1998, 2000 and 2003 for driving with a suspended license, and after failing to appear in the 2000 case, he was again arrested on a warrant. He served a day in jail and paid a fine.
Bryce, in his statement, tried to pivot back to the issues he's running on.
"I know from my own life experiences and mistakes that our criminal justice system needs to be reformed," he said, adding that he was "knee-deep in medical bills" when he was arrested because of cancer treatment.
"I was focused on how to make it through the day and paying back my medical bills outweighed losing a day of work," Bryce said. "No one should ever be put in this situation."

Liberal states impose new individual mandate ahead of ObamaCare rollback

Last year’s sweeping Republican tax bill killed the federal tax penalty for individuals who refuse to get health insurance as mandated under ObamaCare.
But as that penalty disappears for Americans in January, a growing number of liberal states are moving to enact their own individual mandates requiring residents to purchase health insurance – a last-ditch effort to preserve a critical part of former President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care law.
Since Republicans passed the tax bill in December, New Jersey, Vermont and Washington, D.C., have passed laws enacting an individual mandate, joining Massachusetts, which famously enacted an individual mandate while Mitt Romney was governor in 2006.
Conservatives are railing against the moves.
“Just when you think the move for government control of health care couldn’t get any worse, somehow it manages to,” Christopher Jacobs, a conservative health policy expert, said when the D.C. Council passed its individual mandate requirement in June.
Under Obama’s health care law, the individual mandate required most people to have health insurance meeting specific standards. The law imposed tax penalties for violations.
But under last year’s final tax-reform bill, people no longer face a penalty for noncompliance as of January 2019.
“We eliminated the individual mandate that said that people had to buy government-approved insurance,” Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., told Fox News in a recent interview. “In a sense, it blew a big hole in ObamaCare.”
The idea behind the mandate was to make sure young and healthy customers are buying into the system, to offset the cost of taking on more sick and elderly customers. The looming rollback has triggered warnings of more disruptions to the market.
“The ACA was about standardizing, and now we are going back to more divergence,” Heather Howard of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs told the Washington Post. “It is much more of a patchwork quilt.”
Earlier this year, New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy signed a bill enacting an individual mandate. It goes into effect Jan. 1.
"Protecting the viability of the individual mandate is needed to maintain a foundation for the insurance market and to allow the success of the (Affordable Care Act) to continue,” New Jersey state Sen. Joe Vitale, D-Middlesex, a champion of the bill, said.
Vermont passed legislation enacting an individual mandate in May, though the details are still being worked out and it won’t take effect until 2020.
“We are committed to maintaining Vermont’s low uninsured rate,” a spokesman for Republican Gov. Phil Scott said at the time.
The D.C. Council in June passed its own individual mandate, which would require city residents to have health insurance coverage.
“Establishing an individual mandate here in the city will ensure that people will continue to have insurance,” D.C. Council member Vincent Gray said.
It comes as Democrats are embracing protecting ObamaCare – specifically the requirement to provide coverage to people with pre-existing conditions -- as an issue in the 2018 elections. Democratic leaders are also signaling that they will use it an issue in the upcoming battle over President Trump’s next Supreme Court nominee, though Republicans blame the law for rising premiums.

Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez draws Bronx cheer for misleading campaign bio

Creepy?

 

The Democratic Socialist candidate seeking to represent New York’s 14^th Congressional District is facing backlash over her working class “Bronx girl” campaign narrative.  

As the Journal News reported, the original online bio for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez -- the 28-year-old Bernie Sanders protégé who defeated longtime Democratic incumbent U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley on June 26 -- seemed to suggest that she commuted to a school in the suburbs from her family's home in the Bronx borough of New York City.

But after critics noted that she and her family left the Bronx when she was 5 years old, the bio was changed to imply that the Bronx was home to her "extended family," the newspaper reported.

Still, no mention was made that her family moved to Yorktown, north of the Bronx, where records indicate Ocasio-Cortez lived with her mother and brother until their home was sold in 2016 for $355,500, according to the report.

Ocasio-Cortez fired back at her critics.

“Your attempt to strip me of my family, my story, my home, and my identity is exemplary of how scared you are of the power of all four of those things,” she tweeted.  

The candidate has built her campaign on a laundry list of socialist ideas such as universal healthcare, a $15 minimum wage, and abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Meanwhile, Ocasio-Cortez’s “Bronx background” is not the first shaky assertion she’s made.

In an interview with the left-wing outlet, the Intercept, Ocasio-Cortez claimed, “ICE is required to fill 34,000 beds with detainees every single night and that number has only been increasing since 2009.”

But according to Politifact, the legislation to which she referred requires only that ICE have 34,000 beds available every day.

 

European leaders 'scared to death' Trump will pull US troops home, ex-defense chief says

European Leaders

European leaders are reportedly nervous that President Donald Trump will make good on his campaign promise to withdraw American troops from the continent if host countries fail to pay their fair share for defense.
Trump has long complained that the U.S. bears too large a financial burden, but has yet to act. While the issue is not expected to come up at the Brussels meeting of NATO next week, uncertainty abounds.
Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told McClatchy that European leaders are “scared to death” and are “increasingly worried [Trump] is going to do things not based on what’s in the best interest … but based solely on his vision of ‘America First.’”

After Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014, NATO allies agreed to move toward a goal of devoting 2 percent of GDP to defense within a decade.  (Associated Press)

Last month, a G-7 meeting in Canada turned sour when Trump disparaged allies and refused to sign a joint statement. Trump’s upcoming summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland, has exacerbated concerns as well.
Erik Brattberg of the Carnegie Endowment’s Europe program, worried that criticizing Europeans weakens alliances and provides “new opportunities for countries like Russia to take advantage of that.”
Eastern Europe, which sits at Russia’s doorstep, has been particularly eager to keep American troops. Poland, for instance, has put forth a proposal for the U.S. to building permanent military bases.
According to Pew Research Data, more than 60,000 U.S. troops are currently stationed in Europe, including 35,000 in Germany, 12,000 in Italy, 8,500 in Britain, and 3,300 in Spain, with thousands more rotating into other European countries per circumstance.
But despite Trump’s rhetoric, his administration has maintained tactical support for Europe, having sent military equipment, participated in regional exercises, and signed defense agreements with Finland and Sweden. Still, any move to permanently withdraw American troops from Europe would ultimately require congressional authorization.

Conservative Liberal Cartoons

The 'conservative' resistance continues against Trump, the man delivering all the conservative results

If President Trump’s next nominee to the Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy is anything like Justice Neil Gorsuch – the president’s first nominee – America will be getting another great justice.
President Trump is scheduled to announce his nominee Monday. The announcement should solidify conservative support for the president – making the already-marginalized Never Trump faction of the Republican Party irrelevant.
For many conservatives, an important reason they voted for Donald Trump was because they believed he would nominate a solidly conservative justice to the Supreme Court.
Exit polls in that last presidential election showed 1 out of 5 voters cited the Supreme Court as “the most important factor” in deciding their vote – and 57 percent of these voters said they cast their ballots for candidate Trump.
We didn’t have a crystal ball, or any kind of political record to predict what President Trump would do. But we had his word and a list of potential Supreme Court nominees he said he would pick from.
Many of us took a chance that Trump wasn’t selling us down the river – and he didn’t disappoint. As one of his first acts as president, he gave us Neil Gorsuch.
Yet now there are still professed conservatives opposing a Trump presidency, even to the point where they’re openly hoping for Democrats to win control of Congress in the November midterm elections.
The irony is that these self-proclaimed "principled conservatives” can relate more to the far-left liberal crowd with their “resist movement” than to the conservative base they claim to want to protect.
In just over 17 months, President Trump has cut taxes and rolled back regulations. This has led to the lowest unemployment rate for African-Americans since records have been kept, the lowest recorded unemployment rate for Hispanics, and the lowest unemployment rate for women in two decades.
These are the practical results of conservative principles when put into action. Not to mention that President Trump has pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate accords and out of the Iran nuclear deal.
Let’s also not forget that one year ago North Korea was firing missiles over Japan, testing atomic bombs and threatening the United States. Today, prospects for peace and security along the Pacific Rim are real, because this president – unlike his predecessors in both parties – took a different approach.
Does anyone doubt if any of the other candidates in the pool of Republican presidential contenders had been elected – and had this much success in this short amount of time – these same Never Trumpers would be working for the president rather than against him?
Yet the “conservative” resistance continues against the man delivering all the conservative results, and their whining grows staler by the minute.
With every promise President Trump keeps to conservatives who took a chance on him, the background noise from the GOP Never Trumpers sounds increasingly muffled – as it should, because the Never Trumpers are like ostriches with their heads buried beneath the ground.
The longer the Never Trumpers choose to dig their heels in and refuse to acknowledge that President Trump is making good on everything he said he’d do, the more credibility they lose.
We’ve heard the Trump haters in the GOP say they don’t like him because he’s – take your pick – not conservative enough (which is utter nonsense at this point); not a politician; or not “presidential” enough.
Perhaps these Never Trumpers are plagued with short-term memories, because some previous Republican nominees could hardly be considered conservative or, in some cases, presidential.
President Trump is unconventional, for sure – and that’s exactly why the American people elected him. He is an outside-the-box, entrepreneurial politician who shakes up business as usual –and delivers results.
If President Trump is re-elected, it’s likely he could have a third – and maybe even a fourth – Supreme Court seat to fill. Conservatives saw this in 2016 when they went to the polls, and that’s why many voted based on this issue and didn’t hesitate to cast ballots for Trump. They knew what was at stake.
Following his nomination to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch said: “A judge who likes every outcome he reaches is very likely a bad judge, stretching for results he prefers, rather than those the law demands.”
This kind of deference to the rule of law and the Constitution is exactly what conservatives were hoping for in a Supreme Court nominee when they voted for President Trump. Conservatives want justices who fairly apply the law and don’t make it up from the bench, and who protect our freedoms.
The Constitution is not a list of suggestions. Justice Gorsuch understands that. As the names that have been floated as potential Supreme Court nominees seem to indicate, President Trump appears to understand that as well.
If those 57 percent “Supreme Court issue” voters had chosen to jump on the Never Trump bandwagon within the GOP, simply because they didn’t like the guy, we’d be looking at a Supreme Court being stacked with judicial activists who’d chip away at our freedom by rewriting the Constitution into whatever suits their political whims.
If the GOP Never Trump crowd truly wants to stand up for conservative principles they should stand with the president. He’s standing with us.
Lauren DeBellis Appell, a freelance writer in Fairfax, Virginia, was deputy press secretary for then-Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., in his successful 2000 re-election campaign, as well as assistant communications director for the Senate Republican Policy Committee (2001-2003).

Liz Peek: Democrats are furious about Trump and the Supreme Court – They have only Obama to blame

Though they won’t admit it, Democrats are suffering continued fallout from the arrogance of the Obama White House. Liberals are furious that President Trump will have the opportunity to appoint another justice to the Supreme Court, thus cementing a conservative majority for the foreseeable future.
Moreover, liberals are upset that the Trump administration may have convinced Justice Anthony Kennedy to recently announce his retirement, viewing that effort as dirty pool. That Kennedy, age 81, is nobody’s fool – and is unlikely to have been manipulated – appears irrelevant.
The real offense, which actually merits outrage from the left, is that President Obama did not convince liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to retire during the many years that Democrats controlled the Senate.
Ginsburg is 85. She will surely leave the bench in the next few years, opening up the possibility that the Supreme Court will have an even greater conservative cast – one that might indeed persist for a generation.
Why did President Obama not plan for such a possibility, which would at least have guaranteed four liberal votes on the court? The obvious answer is that he never anticipated that the opportunity would pass.

It was President Obama who left his party in this position. His anti-business agenda was unpopular, but was never revisited. Democrats’ losses over the past decade stemmed in large part from a slow-growth economy that never gained momentum.

Even though he received what he called a “shellacking” in the 2010 midterms, and even though the GOP made unprecedented political gains during his tenure, President Obama was always convinced the country was behind him.
 As Mara Liasson wrote for NPR in 2016: “During Obama's eight years in office, the Democrats have lost more House, Senate, state legislative and governors seats than under any other president.” She noted that the Obama legacy includes “one huge failure: a diminished Democratic Party.”
In 2013, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., invoked the so-called “nuclear option,” discarding traditional filibuster protections for the minority party in favor of requiring only a simple majority to approve judicial and executive branch nominees. He carved out an exception for people put forward for the Supreme Court.
The next year – with CNN describing President Obama as an “unpopular president limping through his second term” – Republicans reclaimed control of the Senate. As a result of that achievement, President Obama’s chances of securing a liberal majority on the high court all but disappeared.
In the spring of 2016, Senate Republicans blocked a vote on Judge Merrick Garland, who President Obama nominated to the Supreme Court following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The Republicans said the looming election should allow Americans to decide which party’s president could appoint the next Supreme Court justice.
Last year, with partisanship riding high in the Senate, Republicans extended Reid’s majority rule provision to include Supreme Court justices, clearing the path for confirming Judge Neil Gorsuch to become a Supreme Court justice. President Trump’s pick to take Justice Kennedy’s place will have to win a majority of Senate votes, which is no mean task.
Now liberals are anguishing about the potential reversal of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion nationwide.
Three Republican senators – Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Susan Collins of Maine – have indicated they will not vote for a Supreme Court nominee who suggests he or she might not respect the precedent of earlier rulings allowing abortion. Moreover, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona has not shown up in the Senate since last year because he is being treated for brain cancer, and cannot be counted on to be able to cast a vote.
With the GOP having but a two-vote advantage in the Senate, the path is narrow.
Still, there is little question that the court will likely soon move to the right, and there is little Democrats can do about it.
President Trump has said he will announced his Supreme Court pick Monday. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has made it clear he wants to vote on the new nominee this fall.
It was President Obama who left his party in this position. His anti-business agenda was unpopular, but was never revisited. Democrats’ losses over the past decade stemmed in large part from a slow-growth economy that never gained momentum of the sort we have witnessed since the election of President Trump.
Stagnant wages, sluggish job growth and lagging capital investment never prodded President Obama to reach out to the business community or to partner with it in reviving the economy.
The Obama White House could not have imagined President Trump’s plan to lower corporate taxes and ease up on regulations. Even through eight disappointing and costly years of economic underperformance, President Obama seems to have never doubted his policies.
In President Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhode’s book “The World as It Is: a Memoir of the Obama White House,” President Obama asks his aides, after Donald Trump’s election: “What if we were wrong?” It was, as The New York Times noted, a moment of “rare self-doubt.”
President Obama’s destruction of his party has largely been overlooked by Democrats, but his indifference to the future of the Supreme Court is an act of political malpractice impossible to ignore.
Recent Supreme Court rulings have not gone well for Democrats. These include Janus v. AFSCME (the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees), which could undermine the influence of public employee unions that generally support Democrats in elections; the upholding of President Trump’s travel ban on countries that pose a national security risk; and the ruling in favor of a baker who refused to produce a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
These decisions and others hint at the influence of the new conservative Supreme Court, and the damage that will done to the progressive movement.
And the retirement of Justice Ginsburg could be next.
Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company. A former columnist for the Fiscal Times, she writes for The Hill and contributes frequently to Fox News, the New York Sun and other publications. For more visit LizPeek.com. Follow her on Twitter @LizPeek.

NFL's new anthem policy is 'worse' than old one, Trump says

President Donald Trump speaks during a rally at the Four Seasons Arena at Montana ExpoPark, Thursday, July 5, 2018, in Great Falls, Mont. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)  (Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

President Donald Trump is not done with the NFL yet, saying the league’s new national anthem policy is “worse” than the original one.
During a campaign rally in Great Falls, Mont., Trump took aim at the NFL’s new policy again, which was passed in May and requires players to stand for the national anthem if they are out on the field. Last season, the NFL came under fire when some of its players kneeled during the anthem.
“Hey, how about the NFL. Look I don’t want to cause controversy. … I don’t want to cause controversy,” Trump said. “They passed this stupid thing. You don’t have to do this anymore if you don’t respect the flag or if you don’t like the country or whatever it is, just go into the locker room.”
“I think in many respects that’s worse. Isn’t that worse than not standing? You know? I think that’s worse. You know what? It doesn’t play. It doesn’t play. I actually think in many ways it’s worse.”
Trump also apparently isn’t a fan of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who signed a five-year contract extension in December. According to ESPN, the deal is worth $200 million over the life of the contract — about 40 million annually.
“This commissioner, where does this guy come from, I have no idea,” Trump said. “They’re paying him 40 million dollars a year, and their ratings are down 20 percent.”

Trump claims Maxine Waters' IQ in 'mid-60s,' slams 'fake Pocahontas' Elizabeth Warren in rally to unseat Jon Tester

President Trump held a rally in Montana Thursday night as part of his effort to oust Sen. Jon Tester, one of his most bitter political opponents -- but the president took time to rail against several other big-name critics.
Speaking at the Four Seasons Arena in Great Falls, Trump said "it's time to retire" Tester, a red-state Democrat. He added that Democrats "actually got their ass kicked" in 2016, drawing racuous applause as he proceeded to unload on such varied targets as The New York Times, Rep. Maxine Waters and Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
"Pocahontas, to you I apologize," Trump said. "To the fake Pocahontas, I won't apologize."
He then joked that he would pull out a heritage kit during a hypothetical presidential debate with Warren and slowly toss it at her, "hoping it doesn't hit her and injure her arm, even though it only weighs probably two ounces." Trump said he would offer to donate $1 million to Warren's preferred charity if she took the ancestry test.
Warren has long been accused of falsely claiming she is of Native American heritage to help in securing jobs, including one as a Harvard law professor.

"Pocahontas, to you I apologize. To the fake Pocahontas, I won't apologize."
- President Trump

Trump also took another dig at California Rep. Maxine Waters, whom he called "the new leader" of the Democratic party.
"Democrats want anarchy," Trump said, saying they would allow gangs like MS-13 "run wild" in America. "And they don't know who they're playing with, folks.
"I said it the other day, yes, [Maxine Waters] is a low-IQ individual. Honestly, she's somewhere in the mid-60s, I believe," Trump added.
WATCHDOG SAYS MAXINE WATERS INCITED 'MOB VIOLENCE' AGAINST TRUMP OFFICIALS
Waters' vocal calls for public pushback against Trump officials has riled up her base of supporters, although the Democratic leadership has pushed back against calls to intimidate political opponents.
Tester -- the main target of the rally -- outraged the White House after he released disputed accusations that derailed the nomination of White House physician Ronny Jackson to be Veteran Affairs secretary earlier this year, leading Trump to demand Tester's resignation.
"Jon Tester doesn't share your values," Trump said at Thursday's rally. "He showed his true colors with his shameful, dishonest attacks on a great man -- a friend of mine."
Trump highlighted Tester's opposition to his travel ban and Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.
He then commented on the woman escorted down from the Statue of Liberty yesterday following an anti-ICE protest.
"You saw that clown yesterday on the Statue of Liberty?" Trump asked. "You see the guys that went up there? I wouldn't have done it. I would've said, 'Let's get some nets and wait until she comes down.'"
Trump also touted his progress with North Korea and vowed to get tough with NATO at this week's summit in Brussels, saying members of the alliance aren't paying enough towards their own security and are relying excessively on the U.S.
Trump was in Montana supporting State Auditor Matt Rosendale, who recently won the state's Senate GOP primary and will face off against Tester in November. Polls show that Tester holds about a seven-point lead over Rosendale, even though Trump carried Montana by more than 20 points in 2016.
Before Trump spoke, Rosendale praised Trump for being a "voice for the unborn" and promised to support pro-life causes if elected -- particularly notable comments given expectations that Trump will soon nominate a conservative justice to the Supreme Court.
Tester's seat is one of a handful that Republicans are hoping to flip as they hold onto a narrow majority in the Senate.
WATCH: JUST HOW VULNERABLE IS TESTER IN NOVEMBER?
Donald Trump Jr. kicked off the Tester tongue-lashing early on in the evening, before his father took the stage. He referred to him as "two-faced Tester" and derided his lack of support for the Republican tax overhaul and other key White House policies.
Towards the middle of the wild rally, the president called out critics who say he's a poor communicator.
"They never say I am a great speaker," Trump said, as the crowd began to cheer loudly. "Then why in the hell do so many people come?"

Democratic Party Downhill Cartoons