Carson flanks Trump, floats drones for border wars

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson is going a step beyond rival Donald Trump in his hard-line proposals to curb illegal immigration, suggesting drone strikes along the southern border.

Carson first suggested last week, during a border tour in Arizona, that such efforts could eradicate border “caves” where smugglers hide illegal immigrants. He's since defended his comments, while also fighting back against any suggestion in the media that he wants to use drones to target actual border crossers.
Carson said in an interview on Sunday that the caves “can be eliminated” as “one of a number of possibilities” toward stopping the flow of illegal immigration.
However, he also told CNN, “In no way did I suggest that drones be used to kill people. … And I said to the media at the time, ‘Some of you are going to say Carson wants to use drones to kill people on the border.’ How ridiculous.”
On Monday, Carson communications director Doug Watts told FoxNews.com Carson was convinced after his border visit last week that a network of smuggler tunnels could be eradicated and acknowledged that the candidate has vowed to “do whatever it takes to protect the American people.”
But Watts also repeatedly said Carson, a retired pediatric neurosurgeon, has never intended to use drones against people.
“After hearing what he heard, seeing what he saw, [Carson] believes that the American people will stand behind what he said,” Watts told FoxNews.com. “We have a security crisis on the border. This is not about illegal immigrants. We’re at war with hardened criminals, drug smugglers and human traffickers.”
To be sure, Trump, who is now leading the GOP field, has forced essentially all 17 major GOP candidates to take a position on difficult illegal immigration issues, and Carson is no exception.
The billionaire businessman began his candidacy in June by vowing to build a wall along the southern border. And most recently, he suggested the country’s longstanding birthright citizenship policies are open to legal challenge -- effectively pushing the GOP field further to the right on the issue.
Carson spoke at a rally in Phoenix on Tuesday and gave two interviews on Wednesday during his visit to Arizona’s border with Mexico that included talks with sheriff officers and a helicopter tour of the region.
“I’d get rid of [smugglers'] hideouts,” Carson said Wednesday, as part of a larger plan that includes surveillance drones, the U.S. military, more border agents and a more formidable border wall to stop the flow of illegal immigrants.

Amid Biden deliberations, WH leaves door open to Obama primary endorsement

The White House left the door open Monday to President Obama endorsing a candidate in the 2016 Democratic primary, raising the tantalizing possibility of Obama choosing between two administration powerhouses as Vice President Biden mulls a run against Hillary Clinton. 

The prospect of a Biden-vs.-Clinton rerun already is said to be dividing current and former Obama administration staffers looking at whom to support -- and potentially work for -- in 2016. Clinton was the obvious choice until her personal email scandal and problematic poll numbers stirred talk about Biden, whose supporters already are pulling together a team for a possible run.
"He's going to collect all the information that he needs to make a decision," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday. Earnest, on the president's first day back in Washington from a Martha's Vineyard vacation, was peppered with reporter questions on the prospects for a Biden bid and where Obama would fall.
He told reporters Obama certainly would support the eventual Democratic nominee in the general election next year -- but hinted an endorsement could come earlier.
"I wouldn't rule out the possibility of an endorsement in the Democratic primary," Earnest said.
Earnest, speaking as Obama and his No. 2 held their weekly lunch meeting, reiterated that Obama believes picking Biden as his running mate was his smartest political decision. But he also said Obama has a deep appreciation for Clinton's service as secretary of state.
Without tipping his hand as to whether Obama is encouraging Biden to enter, Earnest said the VP is well-positioned to make the decision himself, as a two-time presidential candidate who's been on the Obama ticket twice.
"You could make the case that there's probably no one in American politics today who has a better understanding of exactly what is required to mount a successful national presidential campaign," Earnest said.
Biden remains undecided but wants to make a call soon.
The Wall Street Journal reports that he is increasingly leaning toward running against Clinton if he can pull together a robust campaign.
Biden stoked speculation further on Saturday by interrupting his own time off and reportedly holding a meeting with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a darling of the left who herself had been urged by grassroots supporters to run. She declined, but she has not yet endorsed anyone in the 2016 race.
Politico reports that the possibility of a Biden bid is dividing the Obama administration, where many had assumed Clinton was the candidate to back. Sources suggested Biden still has strong support. "I don't know what the official line will be," an unnamed White House official told Politico, "but you will have a lot of people in the building rooting for him."
Josh Alcorn, a ringleader in the effort to get Biden in the race, said Sunday that while Biden trails would-be competitors in money and organization, he could still win.
"We have a grassroots list of 200,000 people that's growing every day," Alcorn, senior adviser for Draft Biden 2016, told "Fox News Sunday." "He may not have the financial resources, but there is a groundswell of support."

Ohio mulls Down syndrome abortion ban, Kasich mum for now

Ohio lawmakers are considering a controversial bill that would ban abortions sought because the baby has Down syndrome, placing the swing state at the center of a new battle for anti-abortion advocates. 

The measure also has implications for the 2016 presidential race, as Ohio Gov. John Kasich seeks the Republican nomination and tries to walk a fine line between burnishing his pro-life credentials and positioning himself as a moderate member of the GOP field. He has not taken a position on the legislation.
"The governor is pro-life and believes strongly in the sanctity of human life, but we don't take a public position on every bill introduced into the Ohio General Assembly," Rob Nichols, a Kasich spokesman, told FoxNews.com.
The Ohio bill would ban a physician from performing an abortion if they know the woman is seeking the procedure solely because of a test indicating Down syndrome in the unborn child.
The bill would hold the doctor, not the mother, responsible for violating the proposed law, which carries a penalty of six-to-18 months in jail.
The legislation is unique, though not unprecedented. North Dakota passed a similar measure in 2013 that banned abortions motivated by the sex of the baby; a diagnosis for a genetic abnormality such as Down syndrome; or the potential for a genetic abnormality.

More on this...

• Kasich touts bipartisan approach, successes as governor

The proposal in politically purple Ohio, though, could have widespread implications, particularly if it spurs even more states to act. According to a 2012 study in the medical journal "Prenatal Diagnosis," U.S. women who receive a fetal diagnosis of Down syndrome choose to have an abortion between 50 and 80 percent of the time, down from 90 percent in 1999 from a study in the same journal.
The legislation is thought to have a good chance of passing. The bill recently passed out of committee in the state House of Representatives on a 9-3 bipartisan vote. Ohio Right to Life, which helped draft the bill, is hoping it will be voted on in a few weeks, when lawmakers return from recess, and reach Kasich’s desk by Christmas.
“What does that say of us as a society if we make decisions about who lives or who dies dependent on if they are going to be an inconvenience, or they are [costing] too much money for health care costs?” Ohio Right to Life President Michael Gonidakis told FoxNews.com. “Someday we are going to find a genetic marker for autism. Are we going to have a 90 percent abortion rate for people with autism? I hope not.”
Gonidakis says he thinks the legislation will pass and Kasich will ultimately sign it.
“We have a track record of being strategic and putting forth an incremental approach to all our initiatives,” Gonidakis said, adding that they have worked with Kasich on roughly a dozen pro-life measures, including a late-term abortion ban.
Republican state Rep. Sarah LaTourette, a co-sponsor of the bill, also told FoxNews.com she is confident the bill will pass.
"While I make no effort to conceal my pro-life convictions, I firmly believe this bill is about discrimination, not abortion. Choosing to end an individual's life simply because they are different, or might have Down syndrome, is discrimination," she said in an email. "There is simply no other way to look at it."
However, if Kasich chooses to back the bill, he is sure to face stiff opposition from pro-choice groups.
"We believe we should all work to ensure people with disabilities are treated with equality and dignity. However, we oppose this ban because it interferes with the medical decisions of Ohioans and does nothing to help people with disabilities or their families,” Kellie Copeland, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, told FoxNews.com.
Copeland said she believes it will be an “uphill battle” to oppose the legislation, but people have flooded her group's phone lines with calls offering donations to fight it.
“We have to make it clear to Gov. Kasich that this is not good health care, this is not what the people of Ohio want,” Copeland said. “This ban would encourage patients to keep information from their doctors and that is bad medicine.”
Gonidakis said he is “100 percent” confident the governor will sign the bill. “He is the most pro-life governor in our state’s history,” he said.
Copeland seemed to agree with Gonidakis: “He’s signed everything they slapped on his desk so far so I don’t see why this would be anything different.”

GOP leaders from two states reportedly plot strategy to slow down Trump

Republican leaders in two states reportedly are plotting to make presidential candidate Donald Trump’s quest for the GOP nomination a lot harder.

Party leaders in Virginia and North Carolina told Politico.com that they are considering a push to require candidates entering their respective Republican primaries to pledge their support for the eventual nominee and not run a third-party candidacy — a pledge Trump, the current frontrunner, would not make when asked to during the Fox News debate earlier this month in Cleveland.
“Anybody who wants to seek the Republican nomination should have to commit to supporting the ultimate Republican nominee,” Virginia’s former Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli told Politico. “I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
Republican party officials in North Carolina announced a similar proposal, and told Politico they already are in talks with lawyers to draft language for a provision that asks each candidate to support the GOP nominee.
“Everything is on the table,” an official told Politico.
Party leaders in North Carolina and Virginia say they hope their ballot proposals will help convince the billionaire businessman to fully commit to the Republican Party.
The primary requirements must be submitted to the Republican National Committee by Oct. 1, Politico reports.
“Ballot access usually is regarded as a party function,” former RNC Chief Counsel Tom Josefiak told the website. “It definitely would be left up to the state party to decide how it’s going to operate.”

Madison Cartoon

Trump turns attack on Walker

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Sunday turned his attack on rival Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, in his soaring and often unpredictable campaign that has largely targeted frontrunners but spared essentially nobody.

“His state has not performed well,” Trump, the billionaire businessman who now leads in most polls, told ABC’s “This Week.” “We need someone who’s going to make it perform well, this country perform well. … I’m the one to do it.”
Like many political candidates, Trump is spending the early part of the election cycle trying to downgrade the early favorites -- in this case Republican Jeb Bush, a former Florida governor, and Democrat Hillary Clinton, a former secretary of state.
Still, Walker, another early favorite who remains a top-tier contender, was more than willing to block and tackle, telling ABC later in the morning that Trump sounds like a Democrat when attack his record as a two-term governor.
“He’s using the talking points of the Democrats,” Walker said. “They didn’t work in the past. They’re not going to work now.”
Trump essentially said he was unconcerned about the campaign for Walker, who trails Trump and Bush in an averaging of polls by the nonpartisan website RealClearPolitics.com.
He argued that Wisconsin has a $2.2 billion deficit, instead of an anticipated $1 billion surplus and that Walker has been forced to borrow money instead of raising taxes to keep state projects going.
Trump argued that people’s realization about Wisconsin’s situation is reflected in Walker’s declining polls numbers.
Walker, who began a second term is January, disagreed by saying the state’s roads and schools have improved under his leadership.
However, he acknowledged the voter frustration into which Trump and other first-time candidates have tapped, albeit misdirected at him.
“It’s why you see not only (Trump’s) numbers up, you see some of the other candidates who have not run for office before,” Walker said. “They’re angry at Washington. Heck, I’m angry at Washington. I’m angry at my own party’s leadership, who told us there were going to repeal ObamaCare and we still don’t see a bill on the desk of the president.”
Trump has also attacked Clinton, suggesting that her email controversy has put her campaign in jeopardy; Bush for comments about federal spending on women's heath care and even fellow GOP candidate and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Trump suggested Perry stared wearing eye glasses to look smarter. Perry's polls numbers are at about 1.5 percent, among the lowest of the top 17 GOP candidates.

Walker appears to take third stance in seven days on birthright citizenship issue

Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker said Sunday he doesn’t support a change to the country’s birthright citizenship laws, appearing to take a third stance on the issue in seven days.
The Wisconsin governor told ABC’s “This Week” that U.S. officials need to “enforce the laws, including those that are in the Constitution.”

Walker made the statement after fellow GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump raised the issue in an Aug. 16 white paper focusing on whether the 14th amendment provides for such rights.
Trump suggested some pregnant women are coming to the United States simply to give birth to secure their family’s stay in the country, which he claims is a misuse of the law. He also said his lawyers think the amendment might not withstand a legal challenge.
"Well, I said the law is there,” Walker said Sunday, arguing he prefers to address the problem of illegal immigration by bolstering border security and requiring employers to use the federal E-Verify system to check the immigration status of prospective hires.
At the Iowa State Fair on Monday, Walker told MSNBC that birthright citizenship should be ended.
"Yeah, absolutely, going forward," he said, arguing like Trump that Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid has also supported such a plan. "To me it's about enforcing the laws in this country.”
Walker was less clear on Tuesday, however. When asked by Fox News about his position on the issue, he said: “I believe (in) securing the border, enforcing the laws. … I do not believe in amnesty going forward. I believe in a legal immigration system that gives priority to American working families and their wages in a way that will improve the American economy.”
Walker also said Sunday that any discussion on immigration that goes beyond focusing on border security and enforcing the laws “should be a red flag to voters.”
The issue has caused some division within the GOP field.
Ben Carson, a retired pediatric neurosurgeon and another of the 17 major GOP candidates, said Tuesday that the U.S. allowing so-called “anchor babies” to stay just “doesn’t make any sense at all.”
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham agreed, saying the birthright citizenship issue must be addressed but disagreeing with Trump’s call for “forced deportation.”
The issue has also been complicated for another GOP candidate.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a former Supreme Court lawyer, suggested in 2011 that conservatives would be making a “mistake” in trying to fight against the amendment. Last week, however, Cruz, who was born in Canada to an American-born mother and Cuban immigrant father, said he supports changes to birthright citizenship.

Mukasey: FBI probe is about Hillary Clinton, not her private emails

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Sunday that Hillary Clinton is indeed the focus of a Justice Department probe, calling the argument that the investigation is about her private email network when she was secretary of state “ridiculous.”

“The FBI doesn’t investigate machines,” Mukasey, a Bush administration attorney general, told “Fox News Sunday." “It investigates people.”
"It is not a political witch hunt," he said.
For months, questions about the private email network Clinton used while secretary of state have nagged her 2016 Democratic presidential campaign.
In recent weeks, the inspectors general for the State Department and the intelligence community have asked the Justice Department to open an investigation into whether Clinton’s network received or sent classified emails.
Clinton and her campaign have repeatedly said that she neither sent nor received classified email. And they have argued the investigation is not a “criminal” probe and that government nomenclature is at the center of the issue.
"What's going on here is something that happens all the time," Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon recently argued. "You have a bureaucratic tangle over what counts as classified and what doesn't."
Mukasey, an adviser for Republican Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign, said arguments about what information was either classified or unclassified is “at the margins” of the debate.
“It’s inconceivable that a great deal of the information was unclassified,” he told Fox.
However, Mukasey acknowledged that the issue of Clinton perhaps or eventually facing criminal charges like now-retired Gen. David Petraeus would depend on what she knew about the content of the exchanges.
Petraeus gave classified information to a female writer with whom he was having an extramarital affair.
Former California Democratic Rep. Ellen Tauscher, who is now a Clinton campaign surrogate, on Sunday largely dismissed the email controversy as a political attack.
“We can quibble about what [emails] should be re-classified when they go out to the public, but that’s dancing on the head of a pin,” she told Fox. “That’s partisan politics.” 

American train attack heroes awarded France's highest honor

The three Americans who helped thwart a massacre on board a high-speed European train were awarded the Legion d'honneur (Legion of Honor), France's highest decoration, by the country's president Monday.

U.S. Airman Spencer Stone, National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos, and their longtime friend Anthony Sadler were honored for tackling and subduing a suspected Islamist militant carrying an AK-47 on the Paris-bound train Friday.
Francois Hollande praised the actions of the three men, saying "You behaved as soldiers but also as responsible men." Hollande added that the men demonstrated "that faced with terror, we have the power to resist ... You also gave a lesson in courage, in will, and thus in hope." British businessman Chris Norman, who helped Stone, Skarlatos, and Sadler subdue the would-be gunman, also received the medal.
On Sunday evening, Stone, who was stabbed with a box cutter during the melee, described his version of the events on the train for the first time during a press conference at the U.S. ambassador's residence in Paris.
The 23-year-old described how he was waking up from a deep sleep when Skarlatos "just hit me on the shoulder and said 'Let's go.'"
Stone and Skarlatos, 22, moved in to tackle the gunman, identified as 26-year-old Moroccan Ayoub El-Khazzani, and take his assault rifle. Sadler, 23, moved in to help subdue the assailant. "All three of us started punching" him, Stone said. Stone said he choked him unconscious.

More on this...

• French train gunman belonged to radical Islamist movement

On Monday, Hollande said that with Skarlatos' words, a "veritable carnage" was avoided.
"Since Friday, the entire world admires your courage, your sangfroid, your spirit of solidarity," the French president said. "This is what allowed you to with bare hands -- your bare hands -- to subdue an armed man. This must be an example for all, and a source of inspiration."
Stone is also credited with saving a French-American teacher wounded in the neck with a gunshot wound and squirting blood. Stone described matter-of-factly that he "just stuck two of my fingers in his hole and found what I thought to be the artery, pushed down and the bleeding stopped." He said he kept the position until paramedics arrived.
"When most of us would run away, Spencer, Alek and Anthony ran into the line of fire, saying 'Let's go.' Those words changed the fate of many," U.S. Ambassador Jane Hartley said Sunday
Asked if there were lessons, Sadler had one for all who find themselves in the face of a choice.
"Do something," he said. "Hiding, or sitting back, is not going to accomplish anything. And the gunman would've been successful if my friend Spencer had not gotten up. So I just want that lesson to be learned going forward, in times of, like, terror like that, please do something. Don't just stand by and watch."

Border Crossing Cartoon

US judge orders immigrant families released from detention

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — A federal judge in California has ordered the government to release immigrant children from family detention centers "without unnecessary delay," and with their mothers when possible, according to court papers.

 U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee

Another Dumb Ass

 In a filing late Friday, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee refused the government's request to reconsider her ruling in late July that children held in family detention centers after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally must be released rapidly.

Calling the government's latest arguments "repackaged and reheated," she found the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in breach of a longstanding legal agreement stipulating that immigrant children cannot be held in unlicensed secured facilities, and gave agency officials until October 23 to comply.

Lawyers for Homeland Security had asked the judge to reconsider her ruling, arguing that the agency was already doing its best to move families through detention quickly and that the facilities had been converted into short-term processing centers.

Attorneys for the government are reviewing the order, said Nicole Navas, a spokeswoman for the Department of Justice, said Friday night.
This is the second time Gee has ruled that detaining children violates parts of a 1997 settlement from an earlier case. The settlement requires minors to be placed with a relative or in appropriate non-secure custody within five days. If there is a large influx of minors, times may be longer, but children still must be released as expeditiously as possible, under the terms of the law.

In her order, Gee countered that immigration officials "routinely failed to proceed as expeditiously as possible to place accompanied minors, and in some instances, may still be unnecessarily dragging their feet now."

Peter Schey, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, said that the court's order "will protect refugee children and their mothers from lengthy and entirely senseless detention."

The government poured millions of dollars into two large detention centers in Texas after tens of thousands of immigrant families, mostly mothers with children from Central America, crossed the Rio Grande into the U.S. last summer. Many have petitioned for asylum after fleeing gang and domestic violence back home.

The centers in Karnes City and Dilley, both south of San Antonio, recently held more than 1,300 women and children combined. A third, smaller facility located in Berks County, Pennsylvania, held about 70 people. All three are overseen by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but the two centers in Texas are run by private prison operators.

Between September 2013 and October 2014, some 68,000 family members — mostly mothers with children in tow — were caught at the border, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Between last October and July of this year, less than 30,000 have been apprehended, a drop authorities say is a result of better enforcement in both the U.S. and Mexico.

In her order Friday, Gee challenged Homeland Security's claim that drastically limiting or ending its family detention policy could spark another surge in illegal border crossings, calling this "speculative at best" and "fear-mongering."

Report: Biden makes unscheduled trip to huddle with Warren, adding to 2016 speculation

Speculation about a White House bid for Vice President Biden intensified Saturday when he made an unscheduled weekend trip from his Delaware home to his Washington residence, reportedly to see Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Democrats in past months have called for the Massachusetts senator to seek the party nomination, convinced that her progressive, Wall Street-reformer message was good enough to defeat front-running Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Warren has so far decline. However, Clinton’s slipping polls numbers amid an email controversy has raised speculation that the 72-year-old Biden after the recent death of his son Beau Biden began considering a likely third-and-final White House bid
Biden ran in 1988 and 2004 but failed to get past the primaries.
Such talk has also been fueled by reports that Democratic donors and operatives along with Biden supporters are putting together plans for another Biden run.
The purported Biden-Warren meeting at the Naval Observatory, the vice president’s residence, was reported first by CNN.
Biden’s official schedule shows him spending the weekend in Delaware. The administration confirmed Saturday only that Biden went to his Washington residence for a last-minute meeting.
In addition, Fox News observed him traveling on Amtrak on Saturday morning from his regular stop in Wilmington, Del., to Washington, D.C., and Warren arriving via a commercial jet from Massachusetts.
Also this week, the pro-Biden group Draft Biden 2016 signed up longtime Democratic strategist Steve Schale, who helped President Obama win Florida in 2008 and 2012. And a Quinnipiac Poll showed Biden running strong in head-to-head match-ups with Republican candidates in key states.

Trump's call to end abuse of US birthright citizenship divides GOP field, legal experts

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s call to end birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants has refueled the immigration debate and spilt the GOP field and legal experts who question whether such a change is possible.

Trump’s plan goes after the 14th amendment, which grants citizenship to essentially anybody born in the United States. But he is particularly focused on stopping pregnant women from illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border for the purpose of having a child or an “anchor baby,” which reduces the likelihood of the parents being deported.
Trump announced his plan Sunday, calling the amendment the country’s “biggest magnet for illegal immigration.” And he continues to suggest that his lawyers think the amendment might not withstand a court challenge.
“I was right,” Trump, the billionaire businessman and top GOP candidate, said Friday night at a rally in Alabama. “You can do something, quickly.”
However, other candidates and legal experts are split on the issue.
“Trump thinks ‘our country is going to hell.’ Well, there is likely little more than a chance in hell that we are going to amend the Constitution,” Jessica Levinson, a law professor at Loyola University of Los Angeles, said Wednesday. “Amending the Constitution is one of the most serious things that lawmakers can do. Therefore the path to doing it is rightfully arduous. I would put the chances … as beyond a longshot."
To be sure, changing the Constitution, the supreme law of the land, would require a two-thirds vote in Congress, then ratification from three-fourths of state legislatures. It could also be changed through a constitutional convention in which at least 34 states convene to vote on an amendment, which would then need ratification from a minimum 38 states.
Trump since announcing his candidacy in mid-June has made illegal immigrants from Mexico a top concern and has suggested several solutions -- including a wall along the southern border and the change to birthright citizenship.
“Many lawyers are saying that’s not what (the amendment) is,” he told Fox News on Monday. “They say it’ll never hold up in court. It’ll have to be tested.”
Trump's six-page immigration proposal was released on the campaign website on Sunday. And within hours, questions about it had become a litmus test for fellow GOP White House candidates and has largely divided the field.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker on Monday said he agreed that birthright citizenship should be ended but that he didn’t back the part of Trump’s plan that calls for deporting the so-called anchor babies.
“I categorically disagree with Trump and Gov. Walker on this point,” 2016 GOP candidate and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore said a day later. “Denying people citizenship is wrong. … I’d very surprised if any lawyer would tell Donald Trump anything like this.”
On Thursday, fellow Republican candidate and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush defend using the term.
“You give me a better word and I’ll use it,” he told reporters on the campaign trail. Bush earlier in the week commended Trump for producing a comprehensive plan but suggest the issue of what to do with illegal immigrants in the United States must be addressed in a more “realistic” way.
The amendment was ratified to the Constitution in 1868, roughly 11 years after the landmark Supreme Court decision Dred Scott v. Sanford that denied citizenship to African Americans, whether free or slaves.
And the amendment has already withstood a Supreme Court test. In 1898, the high court ruled that San-Francisco-born Wong Kim Ark was a citizen despite being born to parents of Chinese descent living in the U.S.
Ben Carson, a retired pediatric neurosurgeon and another of the 17 major GOP candidates, said Tuesday that the U.S. allowing the so-called anchor babies “doesn’t make any sense at all.”
Republican candidate and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham also agreed this week that the birthright citizenship issue must be addressed but told CNN that fixing the county’s broken immigration system must come first and that he disagrees with Trump’s call for “forced deportation.”
Supporters of such a change argue that most European countries don’t automatically grant citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants.
The issue has also been a complicated one for GOP candidate Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a former Supreme Court lawyer who in 2011 suggested that conservatives would be making a “mistake” in trying to mount a legal challenge to the amendment.
This week, Cruz, born in Canada to an American-born mother and Cuban-immigrant father, said he supports changes to birthright citizenship.
Critics of the amendment are trying to make the argument before voters that the hundreds of thousands of children who fall into that category are costing them millions in tax dollars.
However, Levinson questions whether enough Americans will buy the argument.
“It may be politically popular with a certain segment of the electorate, but I do not believe this is a mainstream view,” she said, arguing two-thirds of Americans support a path to citizenship or permanent legal status for illegal immigrants. “This is an argument that is likely to gain traction in the primary elections, but I think it could be viewed quite differently in the general election."

More evidence, questions arise about existence of second, private Clinton email server

It's all over but the Crying.

The tens of thousands of emails on Hillary Clinton’s private server from when she was secretary of state could also be on a second device or server, according to news reports.

The FBI now has the only confirmed private server, as part of a Justice Department probe to determine whether it sent of received classified information for Clinton when she was the country’s top diplomat from 2009 to 2013.
Platte River Networks, which managed Clinton's server and private email network after she left the State Department, has indicated it transfer – or “transferred” – emails from the original server in 2013, according to The Washington Examiner.
However, Clinton, the front-running Democratic presidential candidate, has suggested that she gave the department 55,000 pages of official emails and deleted roughly 30,000 personal ones in January, which raises the possibility they were culled from a second device.
Neither a Clinton spokesman nor an attorney for the Colorado-based Platte River Networks returned an Examiner’s request for comment, the news–gathering agency reported Saturday.
The DailyMail.com on Aug. 14 was among the first to report the possibility of a second server.
The FBI took the server last week, after a U.S. Intelligence Community inspector general reportedly found two Clinton emails that included sensitive information, then asked the FBI to further investigate.
Platte River Networks has told news agencies that the server, now in New Jersey, has been wiped clean. But forensics experts still might be able to recover some information.
There have been reports that some of the emails that Clinton turned over included classified information. Clinton maintains that she neither sent nor received classified data, which suggests the missives might have been marked after the fact as classified or with some other top-secret classification.
The emails that Clinton gave to the State Department were on multiple storage devices.  A Clinton lawyer turned over at least one thumb drive that reportedly included copies of the emails that his client has already given to the federal government.
Clinton has maintained that she has done nothing wrong or illegal and says she will cooperate fully with the non-criminal investigations.
However, polls show the controversy and frequents news headlines have hurt the front-running Clinton among potential voters, who are increasingly questioning her transparency and trustworthiness.

Trump’s Critics Are Wrong about the 14th Amendment and Birthright Citizenship

 

Donald Trump continues to bewilder political experts. He unabashedly wades into politically dangerous territory and yet continues to be rewarded by favorable poll results. He has clearly tapped into a reserve of public resentment for inside-the-Beltway politics. How far this resentment will carry him is anyone’s guess, but the Republican establishment is worried. His latest proposal to end birthright citizenship has set off alarm bells in the Republican party. The leadership worries that Trump will derail the party’s plans to appeal to the Latino vote. Establishment Republicans believe that the future of the party depends on being able to capture a larger share of this rapidly expanding electorate. Trump’s plan, however, may appeal to the most rapidly expanding electorate, senior citizens, and may have an even greater appeal to the millions of Republicans who stayed away from the polls in 2012 as well as the ethnic and blue-collar Democrats who crossed party lines to vote Republican in the congressional elections of 2014. All of these voters outnumber any increase in the Latino vote that Republicans could possibly hope to gain from a population that has consistently voted Democratic by a two-thirds majority and shows little inclination to change. RELATED: Not Hard to Read the 14th Amendment As Not Requiring Birthright Citizenship — And Nothing Odd About Supporting Such a Reading Critics say that Trump’s plan is unrealistic, that it would require a constitutional amendment because the 14th Amendment mandates birthright citizenship and that the Supreme Court has upheld this requirement ever since its passage in 1868. The critics are wrong. A correct understanding of the intent of the framers of the 14th Amendment and legislation passed by Congress in the late 19th century and in 1923 extending citizenship to American Indians provide ample proof that Congress has constitutional power to define who is within the “jurisdiction of the United States” and therefore eligible for citizenship. Simple legislation passed by Congress and signed by the president would be constitutional under the 14th Amendment. Birthright citizenship is the policy whereby the children of illegal aliens born within the geographical limits of the U.S. are entitled to American citizenship — and, as Trump says, it is a great magnet for illegal immigration. Many of Trump’s critics believe that this policy is an explicit command of the Constitution, consistent with the British common-law system. This is simply not true. Congress has constitutional power to define who is within the “jurisdiction of the United States” and therefore eligible for citizenship. Although the Constitution of 1787 mentioned citizens, it did not define citizenship. It was in 1868 that a definition of citizenship entered the Constitution with the ratification of the 14th Amendment. Here is the familiar language: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Thus there are two components to American citizenship: birth or naturalization in the U.S. and being subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. Today, we somehow have come to believe that anyone born within the geographical limits of the U.S. is automatically subject to its jurisdiction; but this renders the jurisdiction clause utterly superfluous. If this had been the intention of the framers of the 14th Amendment, presumably they would have said simply that all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. are thereby citizens.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/birthright-citizenship-not-mandated-by-constitution

Indeed, during debate over the amendment, Senator Jacob Howard, the author of the citizenship clause, attempted to assure skeptical colleagues that the language was not intended to make Indians citizens of the United States. Indians, Howard conceded, were born within the nation’s geographical limits, but he steadfastly maintained that they were not subject to its jurisdiction because they owed allegiance to their tribes and not to the U.S. Senator Lyman Trumbull, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, supported this view, arguing that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” meant “not owing allegiance to anybody else and being subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States.” RELATED: End Birthright Citizenship Now: Barack Obama Makes the Case Jurisdiction understood as allegiance, Senator Howard explained, excludes not only Indians but “persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, [or] who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers.” Thus, “subject to the jurisdiction” does not simply mean, as is commonly thought today, subject to American laws or courts. It means owing exclusive political allegiance to the U.S. Furthermore, there has never been an explicit holding by the Supreme Court that the children of illegal aliens are automatically accorded birthright citizenship. In the case of Wong Kim Ark (1898) the Court ruled that a child born in the U.S. of legal aliens was entitled to “birthright citizenship” under the 14th Amendment. This was a 5–4 opinion which provoked the dissent of Chief Justice Melville Fuller, who argued that, contrary to the reasoning of the majority’s holding, the 14th Amendment did not in fact adopt the common-law understanding of birthright citizenship. Get Free Exclusive NR Content The framers of the Constitution were, of course, well-versed in the British common law, having learned its essential principles from William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. As such, they knew that the very concept of citizenship was unknown in British common law. Blackstone speaks only of “birthright subjectship” or “birthright allegiance,” never using the terms “citizen” or “citizenship.” The idea of birthright subjectship, as Blackstone admitted, was derived from feudal law. It is the relation of master and servant: All who are born within the protection of the king owed perpetual allegiance as a “debt of gratitude.” According to Blackstone, this debt is “intrinsic” and “cannot be forfeited, cancelled, or altered.” Birthright subjectship under common law is the doctrine of perpetual allegiance. America’s Founders rejected this doctrine. The Declaration of Independence, after all, solemnly proclaims that “the good People of these Colonies . . . are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved.” So, the common law — the feudal doctrine of perpetual allegiance — could not possibly serve as the ground of American citizenship. Indeed, the idea is too preposterous to entertain. RELATED: Trump’s Immigration Plan Is a Good Start — For All GOP Candidates Consider as well that, in 1868, Congress passed the Expatriation Act. This permitted American citizens to renounce their allegiance and alienate their citizenship. This piece of legislation was supported by Senator Howard and other leading architects of the 14th Amendment, and characterized the right of expatriation as “a natural and inherent right of all people, indispensable to the enjoyment of the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Like the idea of citizenship, this right of expatriation is wholly incompatible with the common-law understanding of perpetual allegiance and subjectship. One member of the House expressed the general sense of Congress when he proclaimed: “The old feudal doctrine stated by Blackstone and adopted as part of the common law of England . . . is not only at war with the theory of our institutions, but is equally at war with every principle of justice and of sound public policy.” The notion of birthright citizenship was characterized by another member as an “indefensible doctrine of indefeasible allegiance,” a feudal doctrine wholly at odds with republican government. Nor was this the only legislation concerning birthright citizenship that Congress passed following the ratification of the 14th Amendment. As mentioned above, there was almost unanimous agreement among its framers that the amendment did not extend citizenship to Indians. Although born in the U.S., they were not subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. Beginning in 1870, however, Congress began to pass legislation offering citizenship to Indians on a tribe-by-tribe basis. Finally, in 1923, there was a universal offer to all tribes. Any Indian who consented could become a citizen. Thus Congress used its legislative authority under Section Five of the 14th Amendment to determine who was within the jurisdiction of the U.S. It could make a similar determination today, based on this legislative precedent, that children born in the U.S. to illegal aliens are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. A constitutional amendment is no more required today than it was in 1923. A nation that cannot determine who becomes citizens or believes that it must allow the children of those who defy its laws to become citizens is no longer a sovereign nation. Legislation to end birthright citizenship has been circulating in Congress since the mid ’90s and such a bill is circulating in both houses today. It will, of course, not pass Congress, and if it did pass it would be vetoed. But if birthright citizenship becomes an election issue and a Republican is elected president, then who knows what the future might hold. It is difficult to imagine that the framers of the 14th Amendment intended to confer the boon of citizenship on the children of illegal aliens when they explicitly denied that boon to Indians who had been born in the United States. Those who defy the laws of the U.S. should not be allowed to confer such an advantage on their children. This would not be visiting the sins of the parents on the children, as is often claimed, since the children of illegal aliens born in the U.S. would not be denied anything to which they otherwise would have a right. Their allegiance should follow that of their parents during their minority. A nation that cannot determine who becomes citizens or believes that it must allow the children of those who defy its laws to become citizens is no longer a sovereign nation. No one is advocating that those who have been granted birthright citizenship be stripped of their citizenship. Equal protection considerations would counsel that citizenship once granted is vested and cannot be revoked; this, I believe, is eminently just. The proposal to end birthright citizenship is prospective only. More Immigration The Very Real Economic Costs of Birthright Citizenship What Conservatives Get Wrong about Birthright Citizenship and the Constitution Donald Trump’s Half-Serious, Half-Fantasy Immigration Plan Political pundits believe that Trump should not press such divisive issues as immigration and citizenship. It is clear, however, that he has struck a popular chord — and touched an important issue that should be debated no matter how divisive. Both the Republican party and the Democratic party want to avoid the issue because, while both parties advocate some kind of reform, neither party has much interest in curbing illegal immigration: Republicans want cheap and exploitable labor and Democrats want future voters. Who will get the best of the bargain I will leave for others to decide.

 

Iran Cartoon

Key New York lawmaker backs Iran nuke deal

Dumb Ass.

WASHINGTON –  President Barack Obama's nuclear agreement with Iran gained momentum in Congress on Friday as a key Jewish Democrat from New York bucked home-state opposition to back the deal.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler's endorsement followed a personal appeal from Obama, and came despite opposition from New York's senior senator, prominent Democrat Chuck Schumer, and other Jewish members in the New York congressional delegation. Iran has threatened to destroy Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is vehemently opposed to the deal.
Nadler became the latest undeclared Democrat to break in favor of the historic agreement, which seeks to keep Iran from building a nuclear bomb in exchange for billions in international sanctions relief.
"I bring to my analysis the full weight of my responsibilities as a member of Congress, and my perspective as an American Jew who is both a Democrat and a strong supporter of Israel," Nadler said in a statement. He said he'd concluded that of the alternatives, the agreement "gives us the best chance of stopping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon."
Nadler, who's the first Jewish lawmaker from New York to back the deal, received a lengthy personal letter from Obama earlier this week defending the deal and pledging that the U.S. will continue to put economic pressure on Iran and keep military options open.
"In our conversations, Jerry raised specific concerns relating to Israeli security and the U.S. commitment to countering Iran's destabilizing activities in the region," Obama said Friday. "I wanted to respond to the thoughtful questions Jerry raised, and I am pleased that our discussions were ultimately productive."
Nadler's announcement comes at the end of a week that's seen the deal pick up a steady stream of Democratic support in the House and Senate despite furious opposition from the Israeli government and Republicans who say it makes too many concessions to Iran and could actually enable that country to become a nuclear-armed state.
Congress is facing a vote next month on a resolution disapproving of the deal, but Obama will veto such legislation if it prevails. Congressional Republicans would then need to muster two-thirds majorities in both the House and the Senate to overturn Obama's veto, a steep bar that even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., says Republicans are unlikely to overcome.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a strong supporter of the deal signed by the U.S., Iran and five world powers, declared this week that House Democratic supporters have the votes necessary to sustain Obama's veto despite unanimous GOP opposition. She reiterated that assertion in a letter Friday to fellow Democrats in which she trumpeted Nadler's endorsement and declared, "I feel confident that we will sustain the president's veto, and we will all work together to hold Iran accountable to honoring the agreement."
The list of public Democratic supporters in the House is now approaching 60, with only a dozen opposed. In the Senate, only two Democrats — Schumer and Robert Menendez of New Jersey — have announced opposition to the deal while 26 have announced their support.
However some key Democrats have not yet made their positions known. Among them: Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada; Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat.

Starnes: Trump Fills Stadiums; Bush Can Barely Fill Banquet Hall

Donald Trump is down in Dixie today - Mobile, Alabama. More than 35,000 people are expected to turn out -- a crowd so big they had to move the whole thing to a football stadium.

Not too bad for a guy written off by the political pundits and fellow candidates like Jeb Bush. Mr. Trump is filling up football stadiums while Governor Bush can barely fill up the banquet hall down at the Best Western.
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Let's just assume that Jeb is telling us the truth, that Mr. Trump is not really a conservative. That he's a liberal wearing Pat Nixon's cloth coat.
If that's true, how sad is it that Mr. Trump is better playing a make-believe conservative than someone who professes to actually be a conservative? Maybe Jeb should replace his exclamation mark with an emoji.
The other day a conservative commentator said Mr. Trump was ruining the GOP. Folks, the only thing responsible for ruining the Republican Party is the Republican Party.

  Watch Todd Starnes' American Dispatch interview above and sound off!

Biden buzz grows amid new polling, ‘draft’ movement picks up key adviser

What a Team!

The Biden 2016 buzz keeps building -- and the vice president is doing little to tamp down the speculation -- as the leading group trying to coax the veep into the presidential race touts new poll numbers they say put him in prime position to run.

The Vice President Biden chatter kicked up again this week on two fronts, as Hillary Clinton continued to see her numbers suffer in the face of mounting revelations in her personal email controversy.
First, the pro-Biden group Draft Biden 2016 signed up longtime Democratic strategist Steve Schale, who helped President Obama win Florida in 2008 and 2012.
Then, a Quinnipiac Poll released Aug. 20 showed Biden running strong in head-to-head match-ups with Republican candidates in key states.
“[The poll] signals the vice president's strength and viability as a serious contender. We see it as an encouraging sign that the American people are hungry for his candidacy,” Draft Biden 2016 said in a statement.
The developments come as Clinton struggles to ignite the Democratic base on the campaign trail. While she’s still the unrivaled front-runner, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is polling competitively in key states and drawing big crowds on the trail.
Sanders’ performance has helped stoke speculation that Biden might have a shot, should he enter.
Schale described his new role with Draft Biden 2016 as that of an informal adviser. “Basically just grabbing an oar,” Schale told Fox News.
Schale told Fox New Radio host Alan Colmes he has “a strong affinity for the vice president,” and said of the current primary race, “there’s just not a lot of energy, and I’m worried about that.”
Two weeks earlier, Josh Alcorn, who has worked for Biden and was working on Beau Biden’s gubernatorial campaign in Delaware before he died in May, also joined Draft Biden 2016 as a senior adviser. The PAC is ramping up a social media campaign to tout the vice president’s accomplishments.
Meanwhile, the new Quinnipiac Poll showed Clinton with a comfortable lead in the Democratic field. But it showed her negative numbers rising, and Biden doing at least as well as Clinton in match-ups against Republicans.
In Florida, for instance, Biden was leading Donald Trump 45-42 percent, while Trump was narrowly leading Clinton. Polling in Ohio and Pennsylvania likewise showed Biden doing well.
Biden has been on vacation in South Carolina with family, and last week it was reported he would be discussing his possible candidacy with insiders and family members -- and make a decision “next month.” The New York Times reported Biden had an hour-long conversation with Richard Harpootlian, former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, and was putting out feelers through advisers to state operatives, “to determine how fast they could organize a campaign.”
The White House has declined to take a stance. In July, spokesman Eric Schultz was asked if President Obama has encouraged or talked with Biden about him running. He said Obama “has said that the best political decision he’s ever made in his career has been to ask Joe Biden to run as his vice president.”
On Monday, however, a “well-placed source” in the White House told CNN the administration was already quite invested in Clinton’s success as a candidate.
Whether or not the White House is on board, there is space for Biden in the primary field, thanks to Clinton’s worsening poll numbers and a general sense of restiveness among the voters for something new, said Tom Whalen, an assistant professor of social science and political author at Boston University.
“[Hillary’s] personal ratings in likeability and trust are falling faster than Red Sox pennant hopes in August,” he told FoxNews.com. “It’s very bleak, and I think Biden would have a good shot. I think voters are open to an alternative.”
Whether Biden fits the bill remains to be seen, said former Democratic strategist Dan Gerstein, who warns polling is still volatile right now, and candidates tend to do better when they are operating from a safe distance, off the trail.
“They don’t have to take the slings and arrows and prove their salt on the campaign trail,” he said. “When Hillary was secretary of state, her [popularity] was at rock star levels. As soon as she got into the campaign, and had to start talking like a candidate … her numbers dropped.”
“Plus,” he added, “Biden comes in with weaknesses of his own. He has run for president twice (’88 and ‘08) and with very bad results. This romanticized version of him now … once he is back on the campaign trial, we’ll see.”
Biden is known for his frequent gaffes. Yet, given the acceptance of Trump’s candor on the other side, it seems voters are more forgiving these days, Whalen said.
He said Biden’s tragic personal life – he lost his son Beau to cancer; his first wife and daughter were killed in a car crash in 1972 – has resonated.
“When you are talking about presidential politics, you are talking personal narrative,” said Whalen. “I think he has a bond with the American people that can’t be underestimated.”

EPA aware of 'blowout' risk at mine that could release tainted wastewater

Managers at the Environmental Protection Agency were aware of the possible risk for a catastrophic “blowout” at an abandoned mine that could release “large volumes” of wastewater laced with toxic metals, according to internal documents released late Friday.

EPA released the documents following weeks of prodding from news organizations like The Associated Press. EPA and contract workers accidentally unleashed 3 million gallons of contaminated wastewater on Aug. 5 as they inspected the idled Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colorado.
Among the documents is a June 2014 work order for a planned cleanup that noted that the old mine had not been accessible since 1995, when the entrance partially collapsed. The plan appears to have been produced by Environmental Restoration, a private contractor working for EPA.
"This condition has likely caused impounding of water behind the collapse," the report says. "ln addition, other collapses within the workings may have occurred creating additional water impounding conditions. Conditions may exist that could result in a blowout of the blockages and cause a release of large volumes of contaminated mine waters and sediment from inside the mine, which contain concentrated heavy metals."
A May 2015 action plane for the mine also notes the potential for a blowout. There are at least three current investigations into exactly how EPA triggered the environmental disaster, which tainted rivers in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah with lead, arsenic and other contaminants. Water tests have shown the contamination levels have since fallen back to pre-spill levels. However, experts warn the heavy metals have likely sunk and mixed with bottom sediments that could someday stirred back up.
Officials in the affected states and elsewhere have slammed the agency’s initial response. Among the unanswered questions is why it took the EPA nearly a day to inform local officials in downstream communities that rely on the rivers for drinking water.
Much of the text in the documents released Friday was redacted by EPA officials, according to The Associated Press. Among the items blacked out is the line in a 2013 safety plan for the Gold King job that specifies whether workers were required to have phones that could work at the remote site, which is more than 11,000 feet up a mountain.
On its website, contractor Environmental Restoration posted a brief statement last week confirming its employees were present at the mine when the spill occurred. The company declined to provide more detail, saying that to do so would violate "contractual confidentiality obligations."
The EPA has not yet provided a copy of its contact with the firm. On the March 2015 cost estimate for the work released Friday, the agency blacked out all the dollar figures.

South, North Korea to hold high-level meeting to defuse war fears

South Korea and North Korea agreed on Saturday to hold high-level talks at the border village of Panmunjom to defuse mounting tensions that have pushed the rivals to the brink of a possible military confrontation.

The meeting is scheduled to take place at 6 p.m. Seoul time, 30 minutes after the deadline set by North Korea for the South to take down the loudspeakers broadcasting anti-North Korean propaganda at their border. North Korea has declared its frontline troops are in full war readiness and prepared to go to war if Seoul doesn’t back down.
South Korea’s national security director Kim Kwan-jin and Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo will sit with Hwang Pyong So, the top political officer for the Korean People’s Army, according to the South Korean presidential office. Hwang is considered to be North Korea’s second most important official after supreme leader Kim Jong Un, and Kim Yang Gon, a secretary of the central committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea and a senior official responsible for South Korea affairs.
The meeting comes as a series of incidents, starting with the North's alleged land mine attack that maimed two South Korean soldiers and the South's resumption of anti-Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts, raised fears that the conflict could spiral out of control.
A South Korean Defense Ministry official, who didn’t want to be identified, said the South will continue with the anti-North Korean broadcasts until the end of North Korea’s deadline, but hasn’t made a decision whether to continue with them if the high-level meeting goes as planned.
In the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, businesses were open as usual and street stalls selling ice cream were crowded as residents took breaks under parasols from the summer sun. There was no visible signs of increased security measures, though the city is even under normal situations heavily secured and fortified. More than 240 South Koreans entered a jointly-run industrial complex in the North Korean border city of Kaesong.
North Korea’s state-run media agency has strongly publicized its rhetoric, saying the whole nation is bracing for the possibility of an all-out war. Leader Kim Jong Un has been shown repeatedly on TV news broadcasts leading a strategy meeting with top military brass to review the North’s attack plan and young people are reportedly swarming recruitment centers to sign up to join the fight.
"We have exercised our self-restraint for decades," the North's Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday. "Now, no one's talk about self-restraint is helpful to putting the situation under control. The army and people of the DPRK are poised not just to counteract or make any retaliation but not to rule out all-out war to protect the social system, their own choice, at the risk of their lives."
North Korean citizens voiced support for the government’s policies and their leader. They also used phrases like “puppet gangsters” to refer to South Korean authorities, according to The Associated Press.
"I think that the South Korean puppet gangsters should have the clear idea that thousands of our people and soldiers are totally confident in winning at any cost because we have our respected leader with us," said Pyongyang citizen Choe Sin Ae.
It’s unclear whether North Korea means to attack immediately, if at all, but South Korea has vowed to continue the broadcasts, which it recently restarted after an 11 year stoppage after accusing Pyongyang of planting land mines that maimed two South Korean soldiers earlier this month.
Four U.S. F-16 fighter jets and four F-15k South Korean fighter jets simulated bombings, starting on South Korea's eastern coast and moving toward the U.S. base at Osan, near Seoul, officials said.
South Korea's military on Thursday fired dozens of artillery rounds across the border in response to what Seoul said were North Korean artillery strikes meant to back up a threat to attack the loudspeakers.
U.S. experts on North Korea said the land mine blast and this week’s shelling were the most serious security incidents at the border since Kim Jong Un came to power after the 2011 death of his father, Kim Jong Il. The country was founded by Kim Jong Un’s grandfather, Kim Il Sung.
"If Kim Jong Il or Kim Il Sung was in charge, I would say that leadership in North Korea would recognize that South Korea has responded in kind to an attack and it's time to stand down. But I'm not sure Kim Jong Un understands the rules of the game established by his father and grandfather on how to ratchet up tensions and then ratchet them down. I'm not sure if he knows how to de-escalate," said Evans Revere, a former senior State Department official on East Asia.
The latest standoff comes during annual military drills between the U.S. and South Korea, which North Korea calls preparation for an invasion. The U.S. and South Korea insist they are defensive in nature.
Hundreds of residents in South Korean border towns had evacuated to shelters during the conflict on Thursday before returning home on Friday afternoon. Fishermen on Saturday were banned for the second straight day from entering waters near five South Korean islands near the disputed western sea border with North Korea, according to marine police officials in Incheon.
Yonhap news agency, citing a government source, reported Friday that South Korean and U.S. surveillance assets detected the movement of vehicles carrying short-range Scud and medium-range Rodong missiles in a possible preparation for launches. South Korea’s Defense Ministry said it couldn’t confirm the report.
The Koreas' mine-strewn Demilitarized Zone is a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the Korean Peninsula still technically in a state of war. About 28,500 U.S. soldiers are deployed in South Korea to deter potential aggression from North Korea.

Tech Server Cartoon

Group is gunning for small town's veteran memorial cross

The memorial features a silhouette of a soldier holding a gun and kneeling at the foot of a cross.
It was installed a few months ago alongside Freedom Rock at Young’s Park in the small town of Knoxville, Iowa.

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“It was clear to us it was a memorial to fallen veterans,” Mayor Brian Hatch told me. But it wasn’t clear to everyone.
About a month ago a citizen filed an anonymous complaint -- arguing that the memorial was promoting Christianity and therefore violated the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Mayor Hatch told me the city council ignored the complaint.
“We didn’t take any action because it (the memorial) did not have any religious ties to us at all,” he said. “I only see it as a memorial to the veterans and it shocked me that someone could see it otherwise.”
Instead of letting bygones be bygones, the offended citizen contacted Americans United for Separation of Church and State – a group that relishes in bullying towns across the nation. On Tuesday their attorney fired off a letter to the town.
“Please remove the Latin cross from government property,” the letter demanded.
Americans United said the Constitution prohibits government bodies from promoting religion on public land and they argued that the Latin cross is the “preeminent symbol of Christianity.”
They suggested that the inclusion of the cross excludes service members of other faith groups.
“Another court prohibited a county government from displaying a war memorial featuring crosses and the Star of David, because this design ‘gave the impression that only Christians and Jews are being honored,’” Americans United wrote in their letter.
Mayor Hatch told me the council will meet next month to decide what course of action to take. Meanwhile, the citizens of Knoxville are launching a campaign to save the memorial.
“This political correctness stuff is getting way out of hand,” resident Doug Goff told me. “When we are bending to the will of one person in the town -- you know something is wrong there.”
Goff is a lifelong resident of Knoxville. He’s also a Navy veteran. And he’s helping to spearhead an August 30^t rally to defend the cross.
“This is a memorial for our veterans,” he said -- wondering if Americans United has a problem with the crosses in Arlington National Cemetery.
“The cross is white because the headstones in Arlington are white,” he said. “Would you take that cross down, too?”
Americans United has given the town 30 days to respond to their demand. If they refuse to comply, don’t be surprised if the town of Knoxville gets hauled into court.
Meanwhile, I think Americans United should answer Mr. Goff’s question. Will they demand that Arlington Cemetery remove their crosses?
It’s doubtful Americans United would pull a stunt like that. I think they just like to bully small towns in the Heartland.

High-level federal employees used work Internet systems to join Ashley Madison

WASHINGTON –  Hundreds of U.S. government employees -- including some with sensitive jobs in the White House, Congress and law enforcement agencies -- used Internet connections in their federal offices to access and pay membership fees to the cheating website Ashley Madison, The Associated Press has learned.

The AP traced many of the accounts exposed by hackers back to federal workers. They included at least two assistant U.S. attorneys; an information technology administrator in the Executive Office of the President; a division chief, an investigator and a trial attorney in the Justice Department; a government hacker at the Homeland Security Department and another DHS employee who indicated he worked on a U.S. counterterrorism response team.
Few actually paid for their services with their government email accounts. But AP traced their government Internet connections -- logged by the website over five years -- and reviewed their credit-card transactions to identify them. They included workers at more than two dozen Obama administration agencies, including the departments of State, Defense, Justice, Energy, Treasury, Transportation and Homeland Security. Others came from House or Senate computer networks.
The AP is not naming the government subscribers it found because they are not elected officials or accused of a crime.
Hackers this week released detailed records on millions of people registered with the website one month after the break-in at Ashley Madison's parent company, Toronto-based Avid Life Media Inc. The website -- whose slogan is, "Life is short. Have an affair" -- is marketed to facilitate extramarital affairs.
Many federal customers appeared to use non-government email addresses with handles such as "sexlessmarriage," "soontobesingle" or "latinlovers." Some Justice Department employees appeared to use pre-paid credit cards to help preserve their anonymity but connected to the service from their office computers.
"I was doing some things I shouldn't have been doing," a Justice Department investigator told the AP. Asked about the threat of blackmail, the investigator said if prompted he would reveal his actions to his family and employer to prevent it. "I've worked too hard all my life to be a victim of blackmail. That wouldn't happen," he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was deeply embarrassed and not authorized by the government to speak to reporters using his name.
The AP's analysis also found hundreds of transactions associated with Department of Defense networks, either at the Pentagon or from armed services connections elsewhere.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter confirmed the Pentagon was looking into the list of people who used military email addresses. Adultery can be a criminal offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
"I'm aware it," Carter said. "Of course it's an issue because conduct is very important. And we expect good conduct on the part of our people. ... The services are looking into it and as well they should be. Absolutely."
The AP's review was the first to reveal that federal workers used their office systems to access the site, based on their Internet Protocol addresses associated with credit card transactions. It focused on searching for government employees in especially sensitive positions who could perhaps become blackmail targets.
The government hacker at the Homeland Security Department, who did not respond to phone or email messages, included photographs of his wife and infant son on his Facebook page. One assistant U.S. attorney declined through a spokesman to speak to the AP, and another did not return phone or email messages.
A White House spokesman said Thursday he could not immediately comment on the matter. The IT administrator in the White House did not return email messages.
Federal policies vary for employees by agency as to whether they would be permitted during work hours to use websites like Ashley Madison, which could fall under the same category as dating websites. But it raises questions about what personal business is acceptable -- and what websites are OK to visit -- for government workers on taxpayer time, especially employees who could face blackmail.
The Homeland Security Department rules for use of work computers say the devices should be used for only for official purposes, though "limited personal use is authorized as long as this use does not interfere with official duties or cause degradation of network services." Employees are barred from using government computers to access "inappropriate sites" including those that are "obscene, hateful, harmful, malicious, hostile, threatening, abusive, vulgar, defamatory, profane, or racially, sexually, or ethnically objectionable."
Records also reveal subscribers signed up using state and municipal government networks nationwide, including those run by the New York Police Department, the nation's largest. "If anything comes to our attention indicating improper use of an NYPD computer, we will look into it and take appropriate action," said the NYPD's top spokesman, Stephen Davis.
The hackers who took credit for the break-in had accused the website's owners of deceit and incompetence, and said the company refused to bow to their demands to close the site. Avid Life released a statement calling the hackers criminals. It added that law enforcement in both the U.S. and Canada is investigating and declined comment beyond its statement Tuesday that it was investigating the hackers' claims.