EXCLUSIVE: U.S. officials conclude Iran deal violates federal law

Some senior U.S. officials involved in the implementation of the Iran nuclear deal have privately concluded that a key sanctions relief provision – a concession to Iran that will open the doors to tens of billions of dollars in U.S.-backed commerce with the Islamic regime – conflicts with existing federal statutes and cannot be implemented without violating those laws, Fox News has learned.
At issue is a passage tucked away in ancillary paperwork attached to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, as the Iran nuclear deal is formally known. Specifically, Section 5.1.2 of Annex II provides that in exchange for Iranian compliance with the terms of the deal, the U.S. “shall…license non-U.S. entities that are owned or controlled by a U.S. person to engage in activities with Iran that are consistent with this JCPOA.”
In short, this means that foreign subsidiaries of U.S. parent companies will, under certain conditions, be allowed to do business with Iran. The problem is that the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act (ITRA), signed into law by President Obama in August 2012, was explicit in closing the so-called “foreign sub” loophole.
Indeed, ITRA also stipulated, in Section 218, that when it comes to doing business with Iran, foreign subsidiaries of U.S. parent firms shall in all cases be treated exactly the same as U.S. firms: namely, what is prohibited for U.S. parent firms has to be prohibited for foreign subsidiaries, and what is allowed for foreign subsidiaries has to be allowed for U.S. parent firms.
What’s more, ITRA contains language, in Section 605, requiring that the terms spelled out in Section 218 shall remain in effect until the president of the United States certifies two things to Congress: first, that Iran has been removed from the State Department’s list of nations that sponsor terrorism, and second, that Iran has ceased the pursuit, acquisition, and development of weapons of mass destruction.
Additional executive orders and statutes signed by President Obama, such as the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, have reaffirmed that all prior federal statutes relating to sanctions on Iran shall remain in full effect.
For example, the review act – sponsored by Sens. Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) and Ben Cardin (D-Maryland), the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Foreign Relations Committee, and signed into law by President Obama in May – stated that “any measure of statutory sanctions relief” afforded to Iran under the terms of the nuclear deal may only be “taken consistent with existing statutory requirements for such action.” The continued presence of Iran on the State Department’s terror list means that “existing statutory requirements” that were set forth in ITRA, in 2012, have not been met for Iran to receive the sanctions relief spelled out in the JCPOA.
As the Iran deal is an “executive agreement” and not a treaty – and has moreover received no vote of ratification from the Congress, explicit or symbolic – legal analysts inside and outside of the Obama administration have concluded that the JCPOA is vulnerable to challenge in the courts, where federal case law had held that U.S. statutes trump executive agreements in force of law.
Administration sources told Fox News it is the intention of Secretary of State John Kerry, who negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran’s foreign minister and five other world powers, that the re-opening of the “foreign sub” loophole by the JCPOA is to be construed as broadly as possible by lawyers for the State Department, the Treasury Department and other agencies involved in the deal’s implementation.
But the apparent conflict between the re-opening of the loophole and existing U.S. law leaves the Obama administration with only two options going forward. The first option is to violate ITRA, and allow foreign subsidiaries to be treated differently than U.S. parent firms. The second option is to treat both categories the same, as ITRA mandated – but still violate the section of ITRA that required Iran’s removal from the State Department terror list as a pre-condition of any such licensing.
It would also renege on the many promises of senior U.S. officials to keep the broad array of American sanctions on Iran in place. Chris Backemeyer, who served as Iran director for the National Security Council from 2012 to 2014 and is now the State Department’s deputy coordinator for sanctions policy, told POLITICO last month “there will be no real sanctions relief of our primary embargo….We are still going to have sanctions on Iran that prevent most Americans from…engaging in most commercial activities.”
Likewise, in a speech at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy last month, Adam Szubin, the acting under secretary of Treasury for terrorism and financial crimes, described Iran as “the world’s foremost sponsor of terrorism” and said existing U.S. sanctions on the regime “will continue to be enforced….U.S. investment in Iran will be prohibited across the board.”
Nominated to succeed his predecessor at Treasury, Szubin appeared before the Senate Banking Committee for a confirmation hearing the day after his speech to the Washington Institute. At the hearing, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) asked the nominee where the Obama administration finds the “legal underpinnings” for using the JCPOA to re-open the “foreign sub” loophole.
Szubin said the foreign subsidiaries licensed to do business with Iran will have to meet “some very difficult conditions,” and he specifically cited ITRA, saying the 2012 law “contains the licensing authority that Treasury would anticipate using…to allow for certain categories of activity for those foreign subsidiaries.”
Elsewhere, in documents obtained by Fox News, Szubin has maintained that a different passage of ITRA, Section 601, contains explicit reference to an earlier law – the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, on the books since 1977 – and states that the president “may exercise all authorities” embedded in IEEPA, which includes licensing authority for the president.
However, Section 601 is also explicit on the point that the president must use his authorities from IEEPA to “carry out” the terms and provisions of ITRA itself, including Section 218 – which mandated that, before this form of sanctions relief can be granted, Iran must be removed from the State Department’s terror list. Nothing in the Congressional Record indicates that, during debate and passage of ITRA, members of Congress intended for the chief executive to use Section 601 to overturn, rather than “carry out,” the key provisions of his own law.
One administration lawyer contacted by Fox News said the re-opening of the loophole reflects circular logic with no valid legal foundation. “It would be Alice-in-Wonderland bootstrapping to say that [Section] 601 gives the president the authority to restore the foreign subsidiary loophole – the exact opposite of what the statute ordered,” said the attorney, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations over implementation of the Iran deal.
At the State Department on Thursday, spokesman John Kirby told reporters Secretary Kerry is “confident” that the administration “has the authority to follow through on” the commitment to re-open the foreign subsidiary loophole.
“Under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the president has broad authorities, which have been delegated to the secretary of the Treasury, to license activities under our various sanctions regimes, and the Iran sanctions program is no different,” Kirby said.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the G.O.P. presidential candidate who is a Harvard-trained lawyer and ardent critic of the Iran deal, said the re-opening of the loophole fits a pattern of the Obama administration enforcing federal laws selectively.
“It’s a problem that the president doesn’t have the ability wave a magic wand and make go away,” Cruz told Fox News in an interview. “Any U.S. company that follows through on this, that allows their foreign-owned subsidiaries to do business with Iran, will very likely face substantial civil liability, litigation and potentially even criminal prosecution. The obligation to follow federal law doesn’t go away simply because we have a lawless president who refuses to acknowledge or follow federal law.”
A spokesman for the Senate Banking Committee could not offer any time frame as to when the committee will vote on Szubin’s nomination.

The billionaire CEO who says he'll leave the country if Trump is elected ( What the Left has to Say.)

What would media mogul Barry Diller do if Donald Trump is elected president? "I'll either move out of the country or join the resistance."

But he's convinced he won't have to do either, saying he would take any bet that Trump will not be elected.

"Truly, I'm not moving, and I don't think I'm joining the resistance," he said in an interview with Bloomberg.
Diller is CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI), the conglomerate of new media businesses from Match.com to The Daily Beast to HomeAdvisor.com. Forbes estimates his net worth at $2.5 billion, while it puts Trump's wealth at $4.5 billion.
Diller attributes Trump's success in the polls so far to the "a phenomenon of reality television as politics." And he said that Trump has learned from "The Apprentice" that good reality television is built around conflict.
"Donald Trump, all he is is about conflict, and all that he is is negative conflict,' Diller said. "He's a self-promoting huckster who found a vein. A vein of meanness and nastiness."
Diller has a long track record contributing to Democratic candidates. In the 2008 election he contributed to numerous Democratic candidates including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. But he also gave money to Republican presidential candidate John McCain, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks donations and lobbying. So far in this election cycle he has not made any contributions.

Next man up? House GOP pushes reluctant Ryan to seek Speaker's chair

Since House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., shocked his congressional colleagues early Thursday by withdrawing his name from consideration to replace John Boehner, R-Ohio, as Speaker of the House, Republicans have launched a relentless press aimed at convincing House Ways and Means Committee chair Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to put himself forward for the job.
Fox News has learned that Boehner himself is imploring Ryan, Mitt Romney's running mate on the 2012 Republican presidential ticket, to put himself forward for the top job in the House, largely because Ryan is one of the few unifying figures in the House Republican Conference.
"It could be a couple of days, but there is a full-court press. Ryan's the consensus candidate", a senior Capitol Hill source told Fox News.
The list of endorsements for Ryan also includes McCarthy, who told the Wall Street Journal, "I think he could unite everybody." Hours earlier, Ryan had expressed his support for McCarthy, calling him "the best person to lead the House."
Other Republicans who have pushed Ryan to run include Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the chair of the select committee on Benghazi, who described Ryan to The Wall Street Journal as "uniquely gifted to lead." Another source told Fox that Romney himself was expected to call Ryan to ask him to run.
Ryan has consistently passed on running for high-profile Congressional positions before, including for the Senate and in other slots in the House Republican leadership. His reluctance dates back to 2008 when an attempt was made to draft him to run against Boehner after the GOP lost control of the House. There were also efforts to bring him into the leadership fold after then-Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his primary last year.

Ryan himself repeatedly denied early Thursday afternoon that he would be a candidate to succeed Boehner, who has said he would remain in his job until a new speaker was installed. The election to choose Boehner's replacement  had been set for October 29, but its date is now uncertain. It's unclear whether more candidates will enter the race or whether the field will stand as is, with Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and Rep. Daniel Webster, R-Fla., vying for the job.
Thursday night, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., told Fox News he was putting himself out as a speaker candidate but "I'd like to tell my wife first."
Ryan's denials were amplified by his spokesman, Brendan Buck, who at one point tweeted Thursday, "Geez folks, nothing has changed," an apparent reference to rumors that his boss had decided to run after all.
However, a source familiar with Ryan’s thinking believes the 45-year-old will eventually step into the fold. The source says the pressure will be “unrelenting because there is no viable alternative.” The source also noted that Ryan would have no excuse not to run for Speaker “because he can move his family to DC.” Ryan and his wife, Janna, have three children.
Late Thursday, Ryan refused to flatly rule out a bid for the Speaker's chair, telling reporters as he left the Capitol, "
"You guys are asking all these interesting questions," Ryan said, "but I don't have any interesting answers right now. "
"I think our conference will come together and unify," he added. "We'll find a way to do it."

P. Parenthood Cartoon

Potentially game-changing oil reserves discovered in Israel

Haifa, Israel – After Israel complained for years that it was surrounded by oil-rich states but didn’t have a drop within its own borders, it appears there’s a big-time turnaround with the announcement Wednesday that massive oil reserves have been located in the Golan Heights,close to the country’s border with Syria.
Afek Oil and Gas, an Israeli subsidiary of the U.S. company Genie Energy, confirmed the find in an interview with Israel’s Channel 2 TVbut conceded that until the oil is actually extracted, they won’t be sure of the actual amounts and quality of the oil that has been discovered.
“We are talking about a strata which is 350 meters thick and what is important is the thickness and the porosity,” the company’s chief geologist, Yuval Bartov, explained. “On average in the world, strata are 20-30 meters thick, so this is ten times as large as that, so we are talking about significant quantities. The important thing is to know the oil is in the rock and that's what we now know.”
“There is enormous excitement,” Bartov said. “It's a fantastic feeling. We came here thinking maybe yes or maybe no, and now things are really happening.”
According to a September 2014 Times of Israel report on the Golan exploration, Genie Energy is chaired by Howard Jonas and counts among its more notable investors the “former US Vice President Dick Cheney, Michael Steinhardt, Jacob Rothschild, and Rupert Murdoch.”
Experts say actually extracting meaningful quantities of oil from the deposits is likely some time away. Some have suggested that while the find could be very significant, the announcement might have as much to do with the share price of the exploration company as the actual certainty that oil will be produced at the site.
The other key consideration in the development of the potential oil feed is its close proximity to the vicious fighting taking place just over the border in neighboring Syria, where ISIS and other jihadi organizations had been battling the Syrian forces of President Assad and his Iran-backed allies Lebanon-based Hezbollah even before Russia’ recent entry into the regional conflict.
Most recent rocket strikes into Israel’s Golan territory have generally been declared stray fire by the Israel Defense Forces, but regional experts point out that the potential costs and challenges of protecting future oil fields so close to the war zone, as well as the large target it would provide for enemy fire, could prove challenging should the project indeed come to fruition and provide the Jewish state –where a reported 270,000 barrels of oil are consumed daily - with its own source of ‘black gold’.
A license to drill in the area was initially issued in April 2013 within an area of nearly 98,000 acres -approximately a third of the Golan itself - but a series of appeals to the Israeli courts by organizations such as the Society for Protection of Nature in Israel and Greenpeace, put all development of the site on hold until a December 2014 ruling gave the green light for drilling.
The main site is close to the small town of Katzrin, which lies northeast of the northern shore of the fabled Sea of Galilee and is home to a wide range of special plants and wild animals, including major nature reserves such as Gamla, home to Israel’s largest population of Griffon vultures.
The rugged land, captured from Syria during the 1973 Yom Kippur War and still under dispute between the two countries, includes vital underground water sources that feed directly into the Sea of Galilee itself, Israel’s main source of fresh water.
In recent years massive natural gas reserves have been discovered and developed off the Mediterranean coast of Israel, but political wrangling over who gets which piece of the financial pie has caused a delay in benefits from the find.
The long-running saga has proved a major embarrassment to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, which in August received a further blow to what the Israeli government had anticipated would be its regional dominance in oil in the eastern Mediterranean when Egypt announced than an Italian company had discovered a gas field estimated at 30 trillion cubic feet. However, the Egyptian fields have yet be developed.

House forms special panel to probe Planned Parenthood

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WASHINGTON –  The Republican-led House has voted to create a special panel to investigate Planned Parenthood and its procurement of fetal tissue for research.
Wednesday's near party-line vote was 242-184. The roll call underscored how the GOP is pressing an issue that has galvanized conservatives.
Republicans say the committee is needed to examine whether Planned Parenthood is breaking laws or misusing taxpayer money.
Democrats call the effort a witch hunt motivated by politics.
They compare it to the Benghazi committee, which Republicans created to probe the 2012 attack that killed four Americans in Libya. Democrats maintain it is aimed at undermining Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time.
Four congressional committees are already investigating Planned Parenthood, which has said it's done nothing illegal.

House speaker candidates vow break from Boehner in race to replace him

The three Republicans vying for House speaker will face off Thursday in a vote that could signal whether a caucus beset by infighting and tactical confusion can come together once John Boehner leaves office.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is considered the front-runner, but will compete against Reps. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and Daniel Webster, R-Fla.
McCarthy is said to be trying to distance himself from Boehner, amid some conservative concerns he'd represent a mere continuation of the sitting speaker's term. The other candidates also are vowing a fresh start.
"I think McCarthy's pitch was `I'm not John Boehner, I'm going to run things differently, I'm my own man,"' Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, said after the candidates made their pitches to members during a meeting Tuesday.
The vote set for Thursday is not the final floor vote; that will take place Oct. 29. On Thursday Republicans will select their nominee for speaker, who then would be seen as the odds-on favorite for the post since they hold the majority in the chamber. However, parliamentary rules could make for an unpredictable vote on Oct. 29.
The speaker's race already has seen a few curveballs since Boehner suddenly announced his retirement at the end of the month and McCarthy swiftly positioned himself as the presumptive next in line.

More on this...

• Kevin McCarthy: Work of Benghazi committee is not political

• Daniel Webster makes pitch to be next House speaker

• Chaffetz: We need a fresh face as House Speaker

Shortly after announcing his candidacy, McCarthy was seen to stumble in a Fox News interview where he appeared to link Hillary Clinton's dropping poll numbers to the congressional Benghazi committee. His comments fueled Democratic charges that the committee is merely political, which GOP leaders deny.
McCarthy himself has walked back the comments, and the leader of that committee, South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, told MSNBC on Wednesday that "Kevin screwed up." He also noted McCarthy had "apologized" for the remark.
Amid the backlash over McCarthy's Benghazi remarks, Chaffetz entered the leadership race over the weekend.
Boehner also decided to postpone other leadership elections until after the Oct. 29 full House vote for speaker.
Whether McCarthy can rally the GOP caucus behind him is an open question. He is thought to have by far the most votes in his corner, but Chaffetz -- while admitting he's the underdog -- says he's furiously talking to members. The media-savvy and highly visible chairman of the House oversight committee claims he can bridge the Boehner-era divide among House Republicans, whose differences have fueled fights over budgets, ObamaCare, the debt ceiling and most recently Planned Parenthood.
"I think it's time for a fresh new start," Chaffetz told Fox News. "Kevin clearly has the majority of our conference. My fear is (he) doesn't have 218 votes on the floor of the House."
Chaffetz, though, pledges he'll support the eventual nominee.
In another development, the House Freedom Caucus, consisting of some 30 to 40 members, issued a statement late Wednesday saying that after exchanges with all the candidates, it would vote for Webster in Thursday’s election because he would be “best equipped to earn back the trust of the American people.”
A divided vote on Thursday could preview problems for the Oct. 29 election and beyond.
That's because in order for the House to formally choose a speaker, a majority of members must back a single candidate. The magic number, referenced by Chaffetz, is likely 218 (though it could be lower, depending on absences and other factors) -- and nobody can win the speakership without reaching that level of support.
Republicans have nearly 250 members in the House and on paper have the numbers to win against the Democrats' nominee, likely Nancy Pelosi. But if the winning Republican nominee on Thursday comes out with a tally short of 218, he'll have to spend the next several weeks trying to rally support to get to that number.
Some conservative groups and members were pushing back against McCarthy's bid in the run-up to Thursday's vote. On Wednesday, the Tea Party Patriots were passing around shirts with a cartoon image of McCarthy holding a glass of wine and a cigarette over the name, "McBoehner," in a bid to cast him as the speaker's double.
In a curious development, Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., also sent a letter to House Republican Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., urging a full vetting of all leadership candidates to avoid a repeat of 1998, when the conference selected then-Rep. Bob Livingston in November to succeed outgoing House Speaker Newt Gingrich. It then emerged Livingston had been conducting an affair. Jones asked that any candidate who has committed "misdeeds" withdraw.
Asked by FoxNews.com to elaborate, Jones said he doesn't "know anything" specific about any of the candidates, but, "We need to be able to say without reservation that 'I have nothing in my background that six months from now could be exposed to the detriment of the House of Representatives.'" He said he wants to make sure the candidates have "no skeletons."

Clinton email server reportedly target of cyberattacks from China, South Korea, Germany

WASHINGTON –  Hillary Clinton's private email server, which stored some 55,000 pages of emails from her time as secretary of state, was the subject of attempted cyberattacks originating in China, South Korea and Germany after she left office in early 2013, according to a congressional document obtained by The Associated Press.
While the attempts were apparently blocked by a "threat monitoring" product that Clinton's employees connected to her network in October 2013, there was a period of more than three months from June to October 2013 when that protection had not been installed, according to a letter from Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. That means her server was possibly vulnerable to cyberattacks during that time.
Johnson's letter to Victor Nappe, CEO of SECNAP, the company that provided the threat monitoring product, seeks a host of documents relating to the company's work on Clinton's server and the nature of the cyber intrusions detected. Johnson's committee is investigating Clinton's email arrangement.
Clinton has not said what, if any, firewall or threat protection was used on her email server before June 2013, including the time she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 and the server was kept in her home in the New York City suburbs.
A February 2014 email from SECNAP reported that malicious software based in China "was found running an attack against" Clinton's server. In total, Senate investigators have found records describing three such attempts linked to China, one based in Germany and one originating in South Korea. The attacks occurred in 2013 and 2014. The letter describes four attacks, but investigators have since found records about a fifth, officials who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly said.
It was not immediately clear whether the attempted intrusions into Clinton's server were serious espionage threats or the sort of nuisance attacks that hit computer servers the world over. But the new revelations underscore the extent to which any private email server is a target, raising further questions about Clinton's decision to undertake sensitive government business over private email stored on a homemade system.

More on this...

• FBI's Hillary email net expands

• Hillary Clinton distances herself from President Obama

Any hackers who got access to her server in 2013 or 2014 could have stolen a trove of sensitive email traffic involving the foreign relations of the United States. Thousands of Clinton emails made public under the Freedom of Information Act have been heavily redacted for national security and other reasons.
Clinton "essentially circumvented millions of dollars' worth of cybersecurity investment that the federal government puts within the State Department," said Justin Harvey, chief security officer of Fidelis Cybersecurity.
"She wouldn't have had the infrastructure to detect or respond to cyber attacks from a nation-state," he said. "Those attacks are incredibly sophisticated, and very hard to detect and contain. And if you have a private server, it's very likely that you would be compromised."
A spokesman for the Clinton campaign did not answer detailed questions from The Associated Press about the cyber intrusions. Instead, spokesman Brian Fallon attacked Johnson by linking him to the House Benghazi committee inquiry, which the campaign dismissed in a recent media ad as politically motivated.
"Ron Johnson is ripping a page from the House Benghazi Committee's playbook and mounting his own, taxpayer-funded sham of an investigation with the sole purpose of attacking Hillary Clinton politically," campaign spokesman Fallon said by email. "The Justice Department is already conducting a review concerning the security of her server equipment, and Ron Johnson has no business interfering with it for his own partisan ends."
The FBI is investigating whether national security was compromised by Clinton's email arrangement.
In June 2013, after Clinton had left office, the server was moved from her Chappaqua, New York, home to a data center in northern New Jersey, where it was maintained by a Denver technology company, Platte River Networks, records show.
In June 2013, Johnson's letter says, Platte River hired SECNAP Network Security Corp. to use a product called CloudJacket SMB, which is designed to block network access by "even the most determined hackers," according to company literature. But the product was not up and running until October, according to Johnson's letter, raising questions about how vulnerable Clinton's server was during the interim.
SECNAP is not a well-known computer security provider. The company's website and promotional literature describe CloudJacket as a monitoring system designed to counter unauthorized intrusions and monitor threats around the clock. Corporate documents show SECNAP has been in existence since at least 2002, selling computer spam filter and firewall products.
A SECNAP representative declined to comment, citing company policy.
The AP reported last month that Russia-linked hackers sent Clinton emails in 2011 -- when she was still secretary of state -- loaded with malware that could have exposed her computer if she opened the attachments. It is not known if she did.
The attacks Johnson mentions in his letter are different, according to government officials familiar with them. They were probing Clinton's server directly, not through email.

Ivy League professor calls Carson a 'coon'

 Ben Carson

Anthea Butler

This piece of Trash is Teaching our Young? 

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/religious_studies/

 Follow the link above for more on the So call University of Pennsylvania

An Ivy League professor said that Ben Carson should win the "coon of the year" after the 2016 hopeful supported allowing Confederate flags at NASCAR events.
In a tweet sent out last Tuesday, University of Pennsylvania religious studies professor Anthea Butler, wrote "If only there was a 'coon of the year' award ..." when responding to Daily Beast editor-at-large Goldie Taylor's tweet containing a link to a Sports Illustrated article on the issue.
"Swastikas are a symbol of hate for some people too … and yet they still exist in our museums and places like that," Carson said during an event with Richard Petty in North Carolina last Monday. "If it's a majority of people in that area who want it to fly, I certainly wouldn't take it down."
Obviously, Butler disagreed with the famed neurosurgeon, who currently sits second in the Washington Examiner's latest power ranking, behind only Donald Trump.

Scotus Cartoon

Critics blast $20M Cal-Berkeley fund for race-based scholarships, hiring

The $20 million fund unveiled by a top California university last month to endow scholarships for African-American students and to hire diverse faculty is just the latest attempt to get around a state law barring schools from using racial preferences in admissions, according to critics, who are vowing yet another legal battle. 
University of California-Berkeley's "African-American Initiative" would raise funds from private non-profits to fund “a comprehensive effort to address the underrepresentation of African-American students, faculty and staff at our university, and improve the climate for those who are here now and all who will join our community in the future.” The money would go to scholarships for black students, the hiring of race-specific clinical psychologists and fostering a more diverse faculty and senior management, according to the school.
“For too long, African-Americans on our campus have faced obstacles to feeling fully included in the life of our university,” said Nicholas Dirks, chancellor of the University of California system's flagship school, adding that the initiative is “predicated on our collective determination to engage and improve the campus climate for African-Americans across every sector of our community.”

“The reality is, if they improved on working towards the achievements of their students they wouldn’t need to go around the law.”
- Ward Connerly

But critics say the scholarship fund is an end-run around Proposition 209, the 1996 law barring state institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity for public employment, contracting and education. Ward Connerly, a conservative African-American who served on the University of California Board of Regents from 1993-2005 and is considered one of the architects of Prop 209, said the initiative appears to be illegal.
“The University of California, especially Berkeley and UCLA, have long tried to circumvent the law when it comes to this,” Connerly told FoxNews.com. “We are a nation of laws and Berkeley is not above them. The school has no right to avoid the law by developing initiatives such as this.”
Prop 209's backers claim it was modeled after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which barred race as a factor in an effort to protect African-Americans from discrimination. By using similar language more than three decades later, the measure's proponents sought to stop racial preferences. University of California schools have seen higher graduation rates among minority students since Prop 209 took effect, with the Berkeley campus alone seeing a 6.5-percent increase in graduating students. But despite the rise in graduation rates, raw enrollment rates among African-Americans has dropped.
At the 38,000-student Cal-Berkeley, African-Americans currently make up just 3 percent of undergraduates, 4 percent of graduate students and 2 percent of the faculty at the university, according to officials.

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Critics say that UC Berkeley is focusing on the wrong methods to raise the enrollment of African-American students. (berkeley.edu)

School officials declined comment, instead referring FoxNews.com to a recent “Q&A” page where Dirks laid out the reasoning for the initiative. But officials told The College Fix the purpose of the initiative is not to make it easier for black students to be admitted, but to encourage more to apply because they know they could get help with tuition once accepted. The endowment fund will consist of “privately administered scholarships for admitted African-American undergraduates, many of whom receive scholarship offers from other institutions that are beyond our current financial aid abilities."
Prop 209's effect on universities has long been viewed as impacting admissions policies. While private scholarships can legally use race as a consideration, Cal-Berkeley's involvement in creating and administering the endowment could be viewed as violating the law's intent, according to Connerly.
“I intend to ask the Pacific Legal Foundation to take a look and if there’s any wrongdoing found, we will sue,” he said. “If we allow them to disregard the law, then they will try to do more and more.”
Gail Heriot, University of San Diego law professor and expert on Prop 209, told The College Fix the scheme does appear to violate the law.
“If the initiative is as described in the university’s announcement, it is a straightforward violation of Proposition 209,” Heriot said.

                                   Nicholas Dirks, chancellor of the University of California

Trump calls former President George W. Bush 'a disaster'

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump took a swipe at former President George W. Bush Tuesday night on Fox News’ “Special Report with Bret Baier,”  saying he had been a “disaster” and entering the Iraq War was “one of the worst decisions ever made.”
In a sit-down interview with Baier, the front-running GOP candidate also said he thought eminent domain, the right of the government or a builder to take away property from its owner for compensation, was “wonderful.”
Trump, a billionaire real estate mogul, suggested property owners shouldn’t hold out in situations where a factory or other job-creation project is proposed and discredited the charge eminent domain meant the government simply grabbed Americans’ homes and other properties.
“Most of the time it’s more money,” said Trump, who also criticized a major critic of the tactic, the influential fiscal conservative group Club for Growth.
When Baier asked Trump if he stood by a statement he made 2007 and 2008 saying he would impeach Bush for getting into the Iraq War, Trump replied, “I think he was a disaster and I think it was one of the worst decisions ever made. (He) has totally destabilized the Middle East. If you had Saddam Hussein, you wouldn’t have the problems you have right now.”
Trump insisted that he is the “most militarist” candidate in the 2016 presidential field but stood behind his recently-stated position that the United States should allow Russia to continue airstrikes in Syria that are hitting Islamic State fighters.
“If somebody wants to go hit ISIS, that’s OK with me,” said Trump, whose campaign has been criticized for too much showmanship and too little specifics on foreign and domestic policy.
Trump also expressed frustration with the constant questions from reporters about whether he’ll stay in the 2016 race, despite leading the GOP field in essentially every poll since early summer.
“That’s dishonest reporting,” he said. “I’m not going to get out of the races. … I’m having a great time. I want to make America great again.”

Justice Department to release 6,000 inmates from federal prisons beginning Oct. 30

The Justice Department will release some 6,000 inmates from federal prisons beginning at the end of the month as part of new sentencing guidelines for drug crimes established last year, a federal law enforcement official confirmed Tuesday to Fox News.
The new drug sentencing guidelines from U.S. Sentencing Commission, which are intended to reduce penalties on certain nonviolent drug offenders, also applies to any future offenders.
The U.S. Sentencing Commission decided in July 2014 that close to 50,000 federal inmates locked up on drug charges would be eligible for reduced sentences. The new sentencing guidelines took effect on Nov. 1, 2014.
The commission’s action is separate from an effort by President Obama to grant clemency to certain nonviolent drug offenders, The Washington Post first reported Tuesday.
The timeframe for release by the Bureau of Prisons is Oct. 30 through Nov. 2, an official told Fox News.
The agency was given one year to prepare for the release of these inmates, which will be one of the largest one-time releases of federal prisoners ever, according to a federal law enforcement official.
While “a majority” of the inmates granted release will be transferred to halfway houses and, in certain cases, drug rehabilitation centers, approximately one-third will be handed over to ICE to face possible deportation, according to an official.
The individuals released at the end of the month will also face a normal probationary period and supervised release.
Under the new guidelines, inmates who were deemed eligible under the new rules could apply for release, according to a law enforcement official.
Each case was then reviewed by a federal judge in the district in which the inmate’s case was tried in order to determine whether it would be beneficial to public safety to grant the prisoner early release.
“Even with the Sentencing Commission’s reductions, drug offenders will have served substantial prison sentences. Moreover, these reductions are not automatic,” Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said in a statement. “Under the Commission's directive, Federal judges are required to carefully consider public safety in deciding whether to reduce an inmate’s sentence."

FBI probe of Hillary Clinton emails expands to second tech company

The FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email has now expanded to include obtaining data from a second tech company, which is fully cooperating with the FBI probe that has threatened Clinton’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, Fox News has learned.
A source familiar with the investigation told Fox that the FBI contacted Connecticut-based Datto, Inc. in September and asked them to preserve all data they had which may be connected to Clinton. Datto was hired to help back up data in May 2013 by Platte River Networks, the Colorado-based tech company that managed Clinton’s server and has already been cooperating with the FBI investigation.
The cooperation of a second tech company raises new questions about whether the FBI is now obtaining any of the emails that Clinton says she and her attorneys deemed to be personal and deleted, as Republican critics have demanded to know if any of those emails were really work-related emails that should have been turned over to the State Department along with other federal records.
Datto's cooperation also raises more questions about whether anyone at the company, where employees do not have security clearances, had access to classified information that was in Clinton’s server. The source familiar with the investigation said that like all major tech companies on the front lines, Datto has faced cyberattacks, another subject of great interest to the FBI in its probe of Clinton’s server.
The FBI investigation gathered new steam this past Friday when officials at Datto received written consent from both Platte River and Clinton’s camp to turn over relevant data to the FBI, a process that is now underway as Clinton struggles in the polls just days before the first Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas.
However, the source familiar with the investigation stressed it’s not clear whether Datto has in its possession all of Clinton’s personal and officials created while she was Secretary of State -- or new emails or other data created after she left office.

More on this...

• Clinton campaign crisis: Will scandals sink Hillary?

• Is Hillary Clinton politicizing the gun control debate?

The confusion comes from the fact that Datto was hired by Platte River and not the Clinton team, so the company had no idea it was backing up data for Clinton until August of this year when company officials read news reports about Platte River having the high-profile contract.
Once Datto officials realized this summer that they had been backing up some of Clinton’s data which was now the subject of an FBI probe, one company official recalled, “there was a collective lump in our throats” and they sought to cooperate fully.
Datto’s involvement was first revealed by Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who is investigating the security of Clinton’s server, and sent a letter to the company this week seeking more information.
Aides to Johnson have privately expressed interest in emails among Platte River officials about whether there was a record of a “directive to cut the backup” of Clinton’s data.
In August, Johnson wrote, an employee at Platte River voiced suspicions over searching for an email from Clinton Executive Service Corp. directing such a reduction in data being stored in October or November 2014 and then again around February, advising Platte River to save only emails sent during the most recent 30 days.
“Starting to think this whole thing really is covering up some shaddy [sic] [expletive],” the Platte River employee wrote.
When employees at Platte River discovered that Clinton’s private sever was syncing with an offsite Datto server, one Platte River employee wrote in an email, “this is a problem.”
The source familiar with the investigation stressed there was no conversation between employees of Datto and Platte River about covering up any data. Though the source noted that this summer Platte River employees were “surprised” to learn that the Clinton data was being backed up in an offsite cloud, which wasa more extensive backup than Platte River officials had anticipated. As a result, officials at Datto took steps in August to make sure the Clinton data was being preserved because they did not want to run into a legal problem.
Michael Fass, general counsel at Datto, would only comment on the company’s general decision to cooperate with the FBI probe.
“With the consent of our client and their end user, and consistent with our policies regarding data privacy, Datto is working with the FBI to provide data with its investigation,” Fass told Fox in an emailed statement that referenced Platte River as well as Clinton.
Fass added in the emailed statement late Tuesday, “Also, we received a letter from the Senate Homeland Security Committee and Government Affairs Committee just last night and we are in the process of responding to it. Datto is a data protection and business continuity company that provides backup data storage to thousands of Managed Service Providers, including Platte River Networks. Datto has no role in monitoring the content or source of data storied by MSP clients such as Platte River.”

Cruz Cartoon

School cancels 'America Day'

Patriotic teenagers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming showed up to class Wednesday waving American flags in defiance of educators who canceled “America Day” over fears it might upset students who don’t consider themselves to be American.
Administrators at Jackson Hole High School pulled the plug on “America Day” – citing concerns that celebrating the USA would alienate some of their young people, the Jackson Hole Daily reported.
Click here to join Todd’s American Dispatch – a must-read for conservatives!
Activities Director Mike Hansen said that a number of students did not feel American and felt “targeted and singled out by this day.”

I wish I could say what happened in Jackson Hole was an anomaly. However, there are many other public schools engaged in similar anti-American behavior.

“America Day” was part of a homecoming tradition at the high school. Students would show up to class either waving American flags or wearing red, white and blue clothing.
“Many different students could have felt singled out,” Hansen told the newspaper. “We’re trying to be inclusive and safe, make everyone feel welcome.”
Principal Scott Crisp echoed those concerns, telling the newspaper that they wanted the homecoming activities to “bring our students together holistically as a student body.”
You’d expect that kind of academic hog wash in Berkeley, California – but Jackson Hole, Wyoming?
The newspaper reported that a number of juniors and seniors protested “political correctness” by showing up to school wrapped in American flags.
And at least one Son of Liberty flew Old Glory from his diesel truck – which I’m sure drew the ire of environmentalists.
“It’s homecoming week and our school administration thought it was too ‘offensive’ to have an America Pride Day,” parent Ted Dawson wrote on Facebook. “Where have we gone so wrong! I don’t care what race or religion you are, you live here, benefit from the schools, enjoy tax benefits or whatever – your (sic) an American or at least you better be.”
One wing nut liberal actually thought the school’s decision to cancel America Day was appropriate.
“Unchecked nationalism is not a great thing and has historically resulted in gross atrocities here and elsewhere,” the unnamed woman wrote on Facebook.
I wish I could say what happened in Jackson Hole was an anomaly. However, there are many other public schools engaged in similar anti-American behavior.
There was a school system in Tennessee that banned the American flag. There was a school district in Massachusetts that banned a day to celebrate the Land of the Free. And there was a California school district that prohibited American flag t-shirts on Cinco de Mayo.
The New York Post called Jackson Hole’s anti-American activities a “pathetic and perverse ban on patriotism.”
“The right response would’ve been to explain to those teens that they are Americans – as entitled to take pride in this nation and its flag as kids whose forebears have been here for generations,” the newspaper’s editorial board wrote.
There was a time when immigrants came to America because they loved freedom. They loved this land of opportunity. They wanted a better life for their children. But I’m afraid those days may be long gone.
And I suspect we would be a much better country if we gave all the America-haters the heave-ho.
As we say back home in Tennessee, don’t let the screen door hit ya where the Good Lord done split ya.
Todd Starnes is host of Fox News & Commentary, heard on hundreds of radio stations. His latest book is "God Less America: Real Stories From the Front Lines of the Attack on Traditional Values." Follow Todd on Twitter@ToddStarnes and find him on Facebook.

Boehner sets House leadership vote for Oct. 29, Chaffetz gets feisty

Retiring House Speaker John Boehner said Monday that the vote for the next speaker would be held Oct. 29 and balloting for all other positions would be delayed until after that in light of the fact Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is among the top candidates to succeed him.
In other words, no decision on who might replace McCarthy will be made until after it’s known if he's successful in his campaign to become the next speaker, especially in light of what appears to be a strong challenge from firebrand Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who officially announced his bid on “Fox News Sunday.”
Chaffetz made his bid after McCarthy’s comments last week about the special Benghazi Committee that Democrats say proved the panel was a political front created to pummel the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.
Over the past two days, Chaffetz has heightened his rhetoric about why he wants the House’s top post and about being a better candidate than McCarthy.
“There will be a realization that we had better put up a fresh face,” Chaffetz told Fox News on Monday.
To win, McCarthy, Chaffetz and Florida GOP Rep. Dan Webster, the third party challenger, will need 218 of the 246 Republican House votes.
However, the roughly two dozen of the House’s most conservative members who were largely behind Boehner’s Sept. 25 resignation, are not expected to fully support a member of Boehner’s leadership team, like McCarthy.
Chaffetz, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, on Sunday said McCarthy had a “math problem.”
On Monday, he said McCarthy's vote count is “dwindling … not growing.”
Chaffetz also suggested he was a better communicator than McCarthy.
“I'm very Margaret Thatcher that way,” he said. “We need to win the vote in the public first. … I didn't wake up and say, ‘Yeah, this was going to be cool.’ ”
Boehner said he made his decisions after consulting with colleagues and that the new speaker will establish the date for these additional leadership elections.
“This new process will ensure House Republicans have a strong, unified team to lead our conference and focus on the American people’s priorities,” he said.

Hillary Clinton attacks Benghazi committee in new TV ad

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton used House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy's words against the House Select Committee on Benghazi in a new 30-second TV advertisement. 
The 30-second commercial, entitled "Admit", is part of a new national cable TV ad buy that starts Tuesday. The ad features McCarthy telling Fox News' Sean Hannity in an interview last week, "Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her [poll] numbers today?"
After McCarthy's remarks, a voiceover narration says, "The Republicans have spent millions attacking Hillary because she’s fighting for everything they oppose ... from affordable health care ... to equal pay, she’ll never stop fighting for you and the Republicans know it."
Emily Schillinger, a spokeswoman for House Speaker John Boehner said in response to the ad, "This is a classic Clinton attempt to distract from her record of putting classified information at risk and jeopardizing our national security, all of which the FBI is investigating."
McCarthy, who has put himself forward to replace the departing Boehner as Speaker, later backed off his initial remarks, saying he "never meant to imply" the Benghazi committee's investigation was politically motivated.
Earlier Monday, Clinton said that if she were president, she would have done everything in her power to shut down the investigation.
"Look at the situation they chose to exploit, to go after me for political reasons: the death of four Americans in Benghazi," Clinton told NBC's "Today" in an interview before a town hall appearance in New Hampshire. "This committee was set up, as they have admitted, for the purpose of making a partisan, political issue out of the deaths of four Americans."
Clinton has previously stopped short of joining some of her fellow Democrats in calling for the committee to be disbanded. She is scheduled to testify before the committee on Oct. 22. She told NBC she was looking forward to her appearance "to explain everything we've done, everything that I asked to happen."
Clinton's comments came as Democrats on the Benghazi panel released a partial transcript of a closed-door interview with Clinton's former chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, in response to what they called selective and inaccurate Republican leaks.
Release of the transcript is "the only way to adequately correct the public record," the Democrats said in a letter to the panel's chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C. They said they would release the full transcript in five days, in order to give Gowdy time to identify any specific information in the transcript he believes should be withheld from the American people.
A spokesman for Gowdy said the committee has not released transcripts from witness interviews in order to "gather all facts" and avoid tainting the recollections of future witnesses.
"By selectively leaking" parts of the transcript from Mills' daylong interview last month, "Democrats have shown their nakedly political motivation, willingness to violate the letter and spirit of House rules and their desire to defend Secretary Clinton without regard for the integrity of the investigation," Gowdy's spokesman, Jamal Ware, said.

Workers remove Ten Commandments monument from Oklahoma Capitol grounds

Workers began removing a Ten Commandments monument from the grounds of the Oklahoma Capitol late Monday in accordance with a court order.
The Daily Oklahoman reported that the six-foot high monument would be reinstalled outside the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, a conservative think tank.
A contractor hired by the state began removing the monument shortly after 10:30 p.m. local time The works comes after the Oklahoma Supreme Court's decision in June that the display violates a state constitutional prohibition on the use of public property to support "any sect, church, denomination or system of religion."
The state is paying the contractor about $4,700 to remove the monument and take it to the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs' offices a few blocks away, Office of Management and Enterprise Services spokesman John Estus told the Associated Press.
The Daily Oklahoman reported that the private contractor was hired to move the 4,800-pound monument out of concern that state workers could not safely do the job without damaging or destroying it.
The Oklahoma Highway Patrol had increased security around the monument earlier Monday, and barriers were erected to keep visitors from getting close to it. Estus said the decision to remove the monument under the cover of darkness was made to avoid disturbing workers at the Capitol and to keep protesters from demonstrating while heavy equipment was being used to detach the two-ton monument from its base.
"We wanted it to be done as quickly and efficiently as possible, and doing it at night gave us the best opportunity to do that," Estus said. "The Highway Patrol was also very concerned that having it in the middle of the day could lead to having demonstrations of some kind."
Originally authorized by the Republican-controlled Legislature in 2009, the privately funded monument has been a lightning rod for controversy since it was erected in 2012, prompting a lawsuit from Bruce Prescott, a Baptist minister from Norman who complained it violated the state constitution.
"Frankly, I'm glad we finally got the governor and attorney general to agree to let the monument be moved to private property, which is where I believe it's most appropriate," Prescott said Monday. "I'm not opposed to the Ten Commandments. The first sermon I ever preached was on the Ten Commandments. I'm just opposed to it being on public property."
Its placement at the Capitol prompted requests from several groups to have their own monuments installed, including a satanic church in New York that wanted to erect a 7-foot-tall statue that depicts Satan as Baphomet, a goat-headed figure with horns, wings and a long beard. A Hindu leader in Nevada, an animal rights group and the satirical Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster also made requests.
The original monument was smashed into pieces last year when someone drove a car across the Capitol lawn and crashed into it. A 29-year-old man who was arrested the next day was admitted to a hospital for mental health treatment, and formal charges were never filed. A new monument was erected in January.
Former state Rep. Mike Reynolds, a Republican who voted to authorize the monument, was one of just a handful of supporters who watched as the monument was removed Monday night.
"This is a historical event," Reynolds said. "Now we know we have to change the Constitution. It would be good to get rid of some of the Supreme Court justices, too."
Several conservative legislators have promised to introduce a resolution when the Legislature convenes in February to send to a public vote an amendment that would remove the article of the constitution that prevents the use of public money or property for religious purposes.

Biden Cartoon

With lead dipping in early states, Trump touts overall dominance, unconventional foreign policy

Donald Trump, front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, on Sunday steam-rolled a new poll showing his lead slipping in early-voting states, while touting his overall lead and his own brand of foreign policy.
Trump holds a 5-point lead in Iowa and New Hampshire among Republican voters, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News/Marist poll released Sunday.
However, his 24-percent support in first-in-the-nation Iowa among Republican caucus-goers is five percentage points less than it was last month. And his 21-percent support among New Hampshire Republicans is down from 28 percent.
“I'm winning everything,” Trump told ABC’s “This Week,” adding that a new poll in Florida shows he’s leading GOP primary rivals Jeb Bush, the state’s former governor, and Marco Rubio, a Florida senator.
“It’s been amazing. Texas, winning. Winning everything. Winning every state. Winning every national poll and big lead,” the provocative, billionaire businessman continued.
Trump said in a pre-taped interview for NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he’s “leading by a lot in every poll” including those in Texas, North Carolina and South Carolina.
He also continued to put forth his unconventional approach to solving Middle East problems after suggesting last week that Russia, now overtly launching airstrikes in Syria, will destroy Islamic State fighters in that country.
“This is usually not me talking because I’m very proactive. I’d sit back and see what’s going on,” Trump told NBC, arguing the mix of terror groups, supporters for the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and rebel forces is now too complicated to decipher.
When pressed during the NBC interview, Trump suggested that the world would be better off had dictators Muammar Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein not been removed from Libya and Iraq, respectively.
“Of course it would be,” said Trump, calling Libya “a disaster” and Iraq “a mess.”
In sharp contrast to his repeated criticism of President Obama’s foreign policy, Trump appeared Sunday to agree with the president that Russian President Vladimir Putin is making a mistake by getting increasingly involved in Syria.
“He’ll get bogged down,” Trump said, arguing that the former Soviet Union’s involvement in Afghanistan sent the communist nation into bankruptcy.
On Friday, Obama predicted Putin’s heightened involvement would get Russia stuck in a "quagmire."
However, Obama suggested he was willing to work with Putin, while Trump said, “I don’t trust him at all.”

Biden suggests GOP and other presidential candidates are 'homophobes'

Vice President Joe Biden, who is considering a 2016 presidential run, on Saturday pledged his full support for gay and transgender equality while suggesting Republican and other White House candidates are “homophobes.”
Speaking at the Human Rights Campaign’s annual gala in Washington, Biden said gays and lesbians shouldn’t fear Americans trying to undo gay marriage and other advances because the country has moved beyond homophobia.
"There's homophobes still left,” he continued to laughter and applause, in his keynote address. “Most of them are running for president, I think."
His speech followed a morning address by front-running Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton who warned hundreds of activists and others in attendance about the potential danger of electing Ben Carson or other GOP candidates.
“We’re going to face some ridiculousness especially from our friends in the GOP,” she said. “In fact it’s already begun. Ben Carson says that marriage equality is what caused the fall of the Roman Empire.”
She also said Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, another 2016 GOP candidate, “slammed a political opponent for marching in a (gay) pride parade.”
The so-called LGBT community and the Human Rights Campaign will be an important voting bloc in the 2016 White House race, particularly in the Democratic primary.
The group contributed roughly $1.17 million in the 2014 election cycle, mostly to the Democratic Party and its candidates, committees and leadership PACs and to Democratic-leaning outside spending groups, according to OpenSecrets.org.
“If any one of them heaven forbid were ever to be elected president, they will do their best to threaten you and their families. Every single Republican candidate for president is against marriage equality,” said Clinton, who vows to make gay rights a key part of her presidency.
Her statements mark a clear political evolution, considering she opposed same-sex marriage for more than two decades in public life as first lady, senator and presidential candidate.
As recently as this year, Clinton said she personally supported gay marriage but that the issue was best left for states to decide -- a position held by most of the Republican presidential field.
Since then, she has placed equal rights at the forefront of her campaign, in part a reflection of the growing political and financial strength of the gay community in Democratic politics.
Biden also threw his unequivocal support behind letting transgender people serve openly in the U.S. military, as the Obama administration considers whether and when to lift the longstanding ban.
His declaration goes further than anything the Obama administration has said before, evoking memories of when Biden outpaced President Obama in endorsing gay marriage. Although the White House says Obama supports a Pentagon review aimed at ending the transgender ban, neither Obama nor the military has said definitively that the policy will be changed.
Biden also declared transgender rights to be "the civil rights issue of our time."
He reportedly could make his decision by this week about whether to run.
Transgender rights were a commanding focus at the group's gathering this year.
With gay marriage now law of the land nationwide, many gay rights activists have turned their attention to transgender issues, which have burst into the public spotlight only recently.
Biden won praise for endorsing gay marriage in 2012 ahead of Obama and Clinton, becoming the highest elected official to support the politically charged issue.
Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, another Democratic candidate, is also aggressively courting LGBT voters' support and working.
Clinton had been the Human Rights Campaign's first choice to keynote the dinner, but she turned it down when she was booked on "Saturday Night Live" for the same evening. The group also asked Obama to speak, then invited Biden when Obama was unavailable.
Although Biden has enjoyed strong support from gay groups, many prominent gay Democrats have committed to Clinton, who drew loud cheers whenever her face appeared in videos played before Biden's speech.

Asian-American rock band fights to trademark 'disparaging' name

                                           Politically Correct Changing of America.

An Asian-American rock band called The Slants asked a federal appeals court last week to trademark its name even though the government says it disparages Asians.
The group argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Friday that it has a First Amendment right to trademark the name because offensive speech or ethnic slurs cannot be censored by the government, Reuters reported. The case is being watched closely because it could affect an appeal brought by the NFL’s Washington Redskins after its trademarks were canceled by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on the grounds that the team’s name disparaged Native Americans.
The Slants frontman Simon Tam told Reuters that while most people today believe “Redskins” is offensive, few Asian Americans believe “Slants” is. He said the band, which plays "Chinatown" dance rock, named itself The Slants as a way to reclaim the racial slur.
The band sued after they tried to register the name with the patent agency and it was rejected. Federal law prohibits trademarks which may be considered disparaging.
Their appeal was dismissed by a three-judge appellate panel, leading to a rare “en banc” review by the circuit’s full slate of 12 judges.
During Friday’s oral arguments, the judges appeared evenly divided, with several expressing skepticism of the patent office’s powers to determine what is offensive, Reuters reported.
Judge Kimberly Moore asked what would happen if the government started rejecting copyrights for controversial art or other expressive works as it is doing with trademarks.
Would there be “no more porn? No more crucifixes in urine?” she asked alluding to a controversial photo many Christians found offensive.
The band’s lawyer Ronald Coleman told the judges the First Amendment “requires all speech, no matter how offensive, not be restricted or gate-kept in any way,” according to Reuters.
Justice Department attorney Daniel Terry countered that the law governing trademark registrations does not violate the First Amendment, Reuters said. Its purpose is not “to help people to make a political statement or prevent people from making political statements,” he said.

Hillary Clinton to push new gun control proposals, executive action expanding background checks

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton will propose new gun control measures, including a vow to employ executive action to expand background checks for firearms sellers at gun shows and online.
Clinton will unveil her plans Monday during a campaign swing through New Hampshire. Her campaign says her proposals include a repeal of legislation shielding gun manufacturers, distributors and dealers from most liability suits, even in the case of mass shootings like the one that killed nine students and teachers at a community college on Thursday.

The proposals mark an attempt by Clinton to make up ground among the liberal wing of the Democratic party against her closest rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. While Sanders has wooed the Democratic base with his liberal positions on issues like income inequality and college debt, he's struggled to defend a more mixed record on gun legislation--a reflection, he says, of his rural, gun-friendly home-state. Sanders backed all the Democratic gun bills brought up in Congress after the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012. But in 1993, he voted against the landmark Brady handgun bill, which imposed a five-day waiting period for gun purchasers, and he backed the 2005 legislation granting legal immunity to many in the gun industry.
Sanders now says he supports banning assault weapons and closing the so-called "gun show loophole" that exempts private, unlicensed gun sales from background checks.
Clinton, meanwhile, has made strict gun laws a centerpiece of her presidential campaign. Clinton has emerged as one of the fiercest proponents of tougher gun control after a series of shootings over the past several months has reignited debate over gun laws on the presidential campaign

"What is wrong with us, that we cannot stand up to the NRA and the gun lobby, and the gun manufacturers they represent?" Clinton said on Friday in Florida. "This is not just tragic. We don't just need to pray for people. We need to act and we need to build a movement. It's infuriating."
Clinton also used the event to slam Republican lawmakers, who, she said, "refuse to do anything" about mass shootings.
"We need to make every politician who sides with [the NRA] to look in the eyes of parents whose kids have been murdered," she said. "The GOP counts on a dedicated group that scares politicians and says 'We will vote against you' ... So we will take them on. We took them on in 90s and we will do again."

The proposals mark an attempt by Clinton to make up ground among the liberal wing of the Democratic party against her closest rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. While Sanders has wooed the Democratic base with his liberal positions on issues like income inequality and college debt, he's struggled to defend a more mixed record on gun legislation--a reflection, he says, of his rural, gun-friendly home-state. Sanders backed all the Democratic gun bills brought up in Congress after the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012. But in 1993, he voted against the landmark Brady handgun bill, which imposed a five-day waiting period for gun purchasers, and he backed the 2005 legislation granting legal immunity to many in the gun industry.
Sanders now says he supports banning assault weapons and closing the so-called "gun show loophole" that exempts private, unlicensed gun sales from background checks.
Clinton, meanwhile, has made strict gun laws a centerpiece of her presidential campaign. Clinton has emerged as one of the fiercest proponents of tougher gun control after a series of shootings over the past several months has reignited debate over gun laws on the presidential campaign

Carly Cartoon

Team Fiorina responds to report trying to tie few donations from HP employees to candidate’s time as CEO

Carly Fiorina’s campaign is pushing back against a published report suggesting the candidate’s tenure running Hewlett-Packard was so bad that no former employee wants to donate to her 2016 White House bid.
Fiorina raised $1.7 million from the May 5 start of her campaign until June 30, the end of the first filing period. However, just two people who contributed during that time identified themselves as Hewlett-Packard executives, according to the most recent Federal Election Commission filings.
The donations were made by former board member Ann Livermore and husband Thomas Livermore, who each gave $2,700.
A Sept. 30 story in The Daily Beast suggested the dearth of support from employees speaks volumes about Fiorina’s legacy at the computer-technology giant, despite the Republican candidate touting herself on the campaign trail as a fearless and overall successful chief executive at Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005.
“The lack of early financial support from almost anyone associated with Hewlett-Packard is hard to square with Fiorina’s own description of her achievements there,” reads one part of the story.
Fiorina spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said Friday that the story is another attempt to belittle Fiorina’s business chops.
“The liberal media is once again showing that they will hide facts and mislead readers as long as it fits their narrative,” she told Foxnews.com.
The story also points out that no contributions were made by Meg Whitman, Hewlett-Packard’s current chief executive and a former California GOP gubernatorial candidate, nor any members of the company’s senior leadership team and board of directors during Fiorina’s tenure, with one exception.
The campaign points out that most of the $1.7 million raised early in the campaign was in small donations and that listing one’s occupation when contributing is not a legal requirement.
As for HP executives, there are currently no members left over from Fiorina’s tenure and they tend to stay “politically neutral” during elections, the campaign also argued.
“I don’t think it is an issue for her,”  GOP strategist Mark Corallo said Friday.
He said Fiorina’s CEO credentials got a big boost in August when former board member Tom Perkins took out a full-page advertisement in The New York Times saying Fiorina was a strong steward of HP through the dotcom bust and that he regretted voting to fire her.
“Carly’s vision and execution not only helped to save HP but made it a strong, more versatile company that could compete in the changing technology sector,” said Perkins, co-founder of the California venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
Corallo said Perkin’s praise is like gold in the business world and should count for something in the political arena, too.
“The guy is a legend,” he said. “For him to come out and say ‘I was wrong and I’m supporting her for president,’ I think that says more to me than any middle manager at HP giving 50, 100 or 1,000 (dollars) or whatever.”
Fiorina’s time at HP has dogged her politically since her failed 2010 bid to unseat California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer.
She led the charge to acquire Compaq, which barely got 50 percent of the board and shareholder approval and has since been pilloried as unwise. And 30,000 people were laid off under her watch.
More recently, primary opponents such as Donald Trump have raised the issue of her business acumen at HP.
"The company is a disaster and continues to be a disaster," Trump said during the Sept. 16 primary debate. "When Carly says the revenues went up, that's because she bought Compaq. It was a terrible deal, and it really led to the destruction of the company."
Fiorina responded by saying that she grew the business from roughly $44 billion to $90 billion and had other successes in the middle of the biggest technology recession in 25 years.
“You can’t fudge the numbers,” she said on the stage. “We went from lagging behind to leading in every product category in every market segment.”
Fiorina’s performance led to a boost in poll numbers. She is now at 11.8 percent, behind Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson in the GOP primary field, in an averaging of polls by the nonpartisan website RealClearPolitics.
But it is not yet clear whether her rise will result in a fundraising boon or if more HP employees and executives have opened up their wallets for their former chief executive officer.
The next quarter filings, July 1 to Sept. 30, are due by the campaigns on Oct. 15.