Clinton Quiet About Own Radical Ties

By James V. Grimaldi

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 19, 2008
When Hillary Rodham Clinton questioned rival Barack Obama's ties to 1960s radicals, her comments baffled two retired Bay Area lawyers who knew Clinton in the summer of 1971 when she worked as an intern at a left-wing law firm in Oakland, Calif., that defended communists and Black Panthers.

"She's a hypocrite," Doris B. Walker, 89, who was a member of the American Communist Party, said in an interview last week. "She had to know who we were and what kinds of cases we were handling. We had a very left-wing reputation, including civil rights, constitutional law, racist problems."
Malcolm Burnstein, 74, a partner at the firm who worked closely with Clinton during her internship, said he was traveling in Pennsylvania in April when Clinton attacked Obama for his past interactions with William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, members of Students for a Democratic Society who went on to found the bomb-making Weather Underground.
"Given her background, it was quite hypocritical," Burnstein said. "I almost called the Philadelphia Inquirer. I saw what she and her campaign were saying about Ayers and I thought, 'Well, if you're going to talk about that totally bit of irrelevant nonsense, I'll talk about your career with us.' "

In her campaign for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, Clinton has said little about her experiences in the tumultuous late 1960s and early 1970s, including her involvement with student protests and her brief internship at the law firm, Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein. She has said she worked on a child custody case, although former partners recall her likely involvement in conscientious objector cases and a legal challenge to a university loyalty oath.
But her decision to target Obama's radical connections has spurred criticism from some former protest movement leaders who say she has opened her own associations to scrutiny.
"The very things she's accusing Barack of could be said of her with much greater evidence," said Tom Hayden, a leading anti-Vietnam War activist, author and self-described friend of the Clintons.
Robert Reich, who went to Yale Law School with Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton and later served in the Clinton administration, called Hillary Clinton's attack on Obama "absurd," adding: "That carries guilt by association to a new level of absurdity. Where does guilt by association stop? I mean, she was a partner of Jim McDougal in the 1980s, for crying out loud." Reich is now an Obama supporter.
In response to the assertion that Clinton is a hypocrite for calling out Obama's ties to Ayers, campaign spokesman Philippe Reines said: "The comparison is patently absurd." The campaign played down her friendship with a noted student protest leader and defended her work with the Oakland firm. "At the time she worked there, the firm was primarily at the forefront of civil rights advocacy cases, which was a good fit with Senator Clinton's long-standing interest in civil rights and constitutional law," Reines said.
Clinton's associations date to her years as a student leader at Wellesley from 1965 to 1969. It was the height of student opposition to the Vietnam War, and Carl Oglesby, the president of Students for a Democratic Society, came to campus to speak.
"I gave a talk at Wellesley, where she was a student," Oglesby said in a telephone interview from Amherst, Mass., where he is recovering from a stroke. "I can't say that I was a close friend of hers. It was more of a passing acquaintance. I liked her. I think of her as a good guy. I think she has a good heart and a solid mind. And I support her in the current primary."
Oglesby had been close to Ayers and Dohrn, but the couple split with the more moderate SDS factions to form the Weather Underground, which engaged in a bombing campaign to try to stop the Vietnam War. The FBI monitored Oglesby throughout the period. The Clinton campaign suggested last week that she did not meet Oglesby until the 1990s, long after his activist years. But in recent interviews, Oglesby has made clear that she stood out in his memory as he traveled across the country speaking at rallies.
In 1994, Clinton told Newsweek that Oglesby's writings in the 1960s helped persuade her to oppose the Vietnam War and to become a Democrat. She visited Oglesby in 1994 in Massachusetts, a meeting that was omitted from the First Lady's official schedule. Oglesby told the Boston Globe at the time, "We mostly discussed the '60s. I may have been a little gushy in my praise of the administration, but she was extremely impressive."
Oglesby now talks warmly about Clinton. In an interview with Reason magazine, he called their association "a friendship, a comradeship, within the context of the movement. She and I, for a while, were warm with each other. She and I were semi-close."
But Oglesby said he has not contacted Clinton because he is afraid that he could harm her candidacy.
"A friend of mine mentioned me to her not long ago, and according to him she got a case of the shakes. I think it was because she could imagine if any of her considerable enemies on the right wanted to do her in, they would be happy to discover a relationship between her and me," he told the magazine.

Clinton interned at Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein while attending Yale Law School. The firm defended the Black Panthers, including Angela Davis, and Clinton had been editor of the Yale Review of Law and Social Action, which included articles about Black Panther leader Bobby Seale's murder trial in New Haven, Conn.
Author Gail Sheehy wrote about the internship in her book "Hillary's Choice." Sheehy, who also wrote a 1971 book about the Black Panthers, interviewed firm partner Robert Treuhaft, who described Hillary Rodham attending a New Haven fundraiser for Seale's defense that he threw with his wife, author Jessica Mitford. Treuhaft -- who, with his wife, left the Communist Party in 1958 -- died in 2001.
Clinton kept up correspondence with the British-born Mitford through the early 1990s. "Top students like Hillary were much sought after by huge prestigious Wall Street-type law firms -- some, like Hillary, were far more interested in left-wing firms," Mitford wrote to a friend in 1992.
In her autobiography, "Living History," Clinton details little of the firm's background. She wrote that she "spent most of my time working for Mal Burnstein researching, writing legal motions and briefs for a child custody case."
But members of the firm have different recollections. Burnstein recalled her working on a case involving Stanford University students who refused to sign an oath attesting that they had never been communists.
Walker said that Clinton probably worked on cases to help young men avoid the draft. "We did a whole lot of conscientious-objector work," she said.
Hayden, one of the Chicago Seven who were acquitted of inciting riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, said he is disappointed that Clinton has tried to taint Obama with guilt by association.
"Once you introduce the concept of guilt by association, everyone is in trouble because there is no end to it," he said. "The goal is to render Barack so unelectable that the party has to turn to her. Because the goal is so narrow and obsessive, she's not aware that she's also going to be collateral damage."
Researcher Madonna Lebling and research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.

Trump to deliver foreign policy speech, focusing on fighting ISIS

JERSEY CITY, N.J. –  Donald Trump will declare an end to nation building if elected president, replacing it with what aides described as "foreign policy realism" focused on destroying the Islamic State group and other extremist organizations.
In a speech the Republican presidential nominee will deliver on Monday in Ohio, Trump will argue that the country needs to work with anyone that shares that mission, regardless of other ideological and strategic disagreements. Any country that wants to work with the U.S. to defeat "radical Islamic terrorism" will be a U.S. ally, he is expected to say.
"Mr. Trump's speech will explain that while we can't choose our friends, we must always recognize our enemies," Trump senior policy adviser Stephen Miller said Sunday.
On the eve of the speech, the Clinton campaign slammed Trump's campaign manager for ties to Russia and pro-Kremlin interests, an apparent reference to a New York Times story published Sunday night. The story alleges Paul Manafort received $12.7 million from Ukraine's former pro-Russia president and his political party for consultant work over a five-year period. The newspaper says Manafort's lawyer denied his client received any such payments.
Trump on Monday is also expected to outline a new immigration policy proposal under which the U.S. would stop issuing visas in any case where it cannot perform adequate screenings.
It will be the latest version of a policy that began with Trump's unprecedented call to temporarily bar foreign Muslims from entering the country — a religious test that was criticized across party lines as un-American. Following a massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in June, Trump introduced a new standard.

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"As he laid out in his Orlando remarks, Mr. Trump will describe the need to temporarily suspend visa issuances to geographic regions with a history of exporting terrorism and where adequate checks and background vetting cannot occur," Miller said.
Trump is also expected to propose creating a new, ideological test for admission to the country that would assess a candidate's stances on issues like religious freedom, gender equality and gay rights. Through questionnaires, searching social media, interviewing friends and family or other means, applicants would be vetted to see whether they support American values like tolerance and pluralism.
The candidate is also expected to call in the speech for declaring in explicit terms that, like during the Cold War, the nation is in an ideological conflict with radical Islam.
Trump's Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and top U.S. government officials have warned of the dangers of using that kind of language to describe the conflict, arguing that it plays into militants' hands.
While Trump has been criticized in the past for failing to lay out specific policy solutions, aides say that Monday's speech will again focus on his broader vision. Additional speeches with more details are expected in the weeks ahead, they said.
Trump is also expected to spend significant time going after President Barack Obama and Clinton, the former secretary of state, blaming them for enacting policies he argues allowed the Islamic State group to spread. Obama has made ending nation building a central part of his foreign policy argument for years.
"Mr. Trump will outline his vision for defeating radical Islamic terrorism, and explain how the policies of Obama-Clinton are responsible for the rise of ISIS and the spread of barbarism that has taken the lives of so many," Miller said Sunday in an email, using an alternative acronym for the Islamic State group.
The speech comes as Trump has struggled to stay on message. Last week, an economic policy speech he delivered calling for lower corporate taxes and rolling back federal regulations was overshadowed by a series of provocative statements, including falsely declaring that Obama was the "founder" of the Islamic State group.
Trump's allies said Sunday they're confident that this time, the billionaire developer will stay on track.
"Stay tuned, it's very early in this campaign. This coming Monday, you're going to see a vision for confronting radical Islamic terrorism," his vice presidential running mate, Mike Pence, said on Fox News Sunday.
Trump and his top advisers, meanwhile, have blamed the media for failing to focus on his proposals.
"If the disgusting and corrupt media covered me honestly and didn't put false meaning into the words I say, I would be beating Hillary by 20 percent," he tweeted Sunday.

Congress could get record of FBI's Clinton interview over emails by this week

Some of the FBI files on the agency’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server exclusively for government business while serving as secretary of state could be given to a House oversight committee as early as this week, a congressional source confirmed with Fox News on Sunday.
The matter has been progressing since early July, when a formal request was made by Congress for the file, the remaining block appears to rest within the Justice Department.
The FBI, after interviewing Clinton last month, concluded its investigation of Clinton's use of a private server, confirming publicly that 113 classified emails were sent and received by Clinton, as well as 2,000 that were classified after the fact.
FBI Director James Comey said investigators found at least three emails that contained classified markings, adding that the Democratic presidential nominee was "extremely careless." However, he did not recommend criminal charges, and the Justice Department closed the case.
While Clinton has insisted nothing was marked classified at the time, the investigation found otherwise, with the emails containing a portion marking (C for confidential, the lowest level of classification). Fox News first reported that some of the emails were marked classified in June.

The House Oversight Committee questioned Comey for over five hours in July after he said no reasonable prosecutor would pursue criminal charges.

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The Oversight Committee has formally asked if Clinton committed perjury during her Benghazi testimony in October 2015, because her statements to Congress appear to conflict with the FBI's findings. Clinton has maintained she was truthful in her FBI interview.
Fox News is told that the FBI and Justice Department have confirmed the receipt of the committee’s request.
Congressional investigators -- led by House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah -- have been aggressively seeking the entire file, including a summary of Clinton’s interview, known as a "302."
However, the document is considered highly classified, because Clinton's FBI session included questions on the 22 top secret emails that are too damaging to national security to make public.
Note that, it is standard for FBI interviews not to be recorded, so there is no transcript, but agents take extensive notes and they form the basis for the written report known as the "302."
The possible release of the file to congressional investigators was first reported by CNN.

Wasserman Schultz, challenger Canova in debate trade jabs over Israel, Iran deal

Embattled Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Sunday faced off with primary challenger Tim Canova in a debate in which the candidates slung names like “mealy-mouthed” and challenged each other’s competence on issues ranging from protecting Israel to support for retiree voters.
Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., was expected early this year to cruise to a seventh term, until Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders accused her, as leader of the Democratic National Committee, of rigging the presidential primary season for front-runner Hillary Clinton.
Sanders then endorsed Canova in May. And leaked emails last month suggested Wasserman Schultz and some DNC staffers were indeed trying to tip the scales for Clinton, which forced Wasserman Schultz to resign from the committee.
“Nobody is more committed to the safety of Israel,” on Sunday said Wasserman Schultz, whose 23 Congressional District, west of Fort Lauderdale, has a large Jewish population.
She also said the DNC under her leadership had the “strongest pro-Israel plank” that the group has had in years.
And she accused Canova, a law professor, of being inconsistent in his position on Israel.
"My opponent has been mealy-mouthed and waffling in his position on Israel from Day One," she said in the roughly 60-minute debate on CBS’s WFOR-TV in Miami. “He's taken three different positions in the last eight months."
Wasserman Schultz -- backed by President Obama and Clinton, now the Democratic presidential nominee -- also disagreed with Canova’s suggestion that she did not have the support of black voters in the district.
Wasserman cited in part the backing of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Canova proposed a second and third debate, which Wasserman Schultz seemed to decline, citing their primary being just two weeks away, on August 30.
Canova has tried to capitalize on the leaked DNC emails, pointing to ones that suggest Wasserman Schultz and others in the group used resources to monitor his campaign. And he vowed last week to file a federal complaint on the issue.
He has also raised $28 million for the race, in large part because of the national attention it has received.
Still, the most recent polling shows Wasserman Schultz with a strong lead in the race.
The candidates also battled Sunday over the support of the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal, which lifts economic sanctions in exchange for Tehran curtailing efforts to make a nuclear weapon -- a deal considered a threat to Israel.
Canova had said he supports the 2015 deal, but now says he doesn’t know how he would have voted had he been in Congress.
“I went over that deal backwards and forwards,” said Wasserman Schultz, who voted for the multi-nation agreement amid criticism about Israel’s future safety and guidelines for inspecting nuclear sites.
On other local issues, Wasserman Shultz knew the name of a mayor in the district, when asked, but Canova did not.
Canova tried to suggest that Wasserman Schultz did not support increasing Social Security benefits, in a district with a large retiree population.
"I stood in the breach over and over with my vote and my voice” to increase benefits, Wassserman Schultz replied.

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The words of Trump, new to the rhetoric of politics, elicit widespread emotions

“Words, words, words,” declared Hamlet to Polonius.
Painters have a brush and easel.  A stonemason deploys a trowel. And politicians wield words.
Words are a politician’s tool. They live by them and die by them. For without words, there are no ideas. No motivation. No proposals. No calls to action. No persuasion.
All are essential in politics.
Of course, an agenda is the main force behind words. Elect this person so they implement a set of policies or adopt legislation. But even if it’s just all talk and no action, the words remain.
This is why politicians aim to use words so carefully. Certainly they sweat over the right turn of phrase in a speech or press release. Astute politicians read a room or an audience. Some even time their delivery like a comedian delivering a punch line to score howls of laughter or applause.

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We know politicians by name and deed. But we mostly remember them for words.
“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
“I’m not a crook.”
Politicians know they’ll step in it if they use words unartfully. Off-the-cuff remarks about race, someone with disabilities or the Holocaust are sure to land a politician in a world of hurt. And, when it comes time to mea culpa, politicians use words.
Words matter in politics. And this is what makes the 2016 campaign so different. The words of Donald Trump are more inflammatory and radioactive than what voters and media have grown accustomed.
This is part of Trump’s appeal. It’s also what turns off scores of people and ignites press coverage.
“Did you hear what Trump said?” is now a regular refrain.
This is why people freak out at the rhetoric of Trump. It’s now a struggle to differentiate between what is a joke and what he really believes. What’s sarcasm and what’s a charge. What’s fact and fiction.
Trump’s uttered a lot of controversial things during this campaign. But next to his proposed Muslim ban (which now isn’t a proposed ban, until Trump apparently extended it to persons of other faiths), nothing scored more attention than his comments about the Second Amendment and Hillary Clinton.
There is white-hot language. There is incendiary rhetoric. And then.
Trump and his defenders argued opponents and the press took the gun remark out of context.
Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Tom Friedman of The New York Times asserts Trump knew exactly what he was doing when he discussed the Second Amendment as a potential backdoor to short-circuit a possible Clinton presidency.
“And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin got assassinated,” proclaimed in the lede of Friedman’s essay this week in response to Trump. “But there are always people down the line who don’t hear the caveats. They just hear the big message: The man is illegitimate, the man is a threat to the nation, the man is the equivalent of a Nazi war criminal. Well, you know what we do with people like that, don’t you? We kill them.”
The health care debate of 2009-2010 was the last time such combustible rhetoric blanketed the American political lexicon.
Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., snarled “You lie!” at President Obama during his presentation on health reform during a 2009 Joint Session of Congress. Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas,  yelled that the bill was a “baby killer” as the House moved through the final version of the legislation.
ObamaCare opponents flooded the Capitol switchboard, leaving threatening messages with congressional aides and on voicemail.
Then-Rep. Bart Stupak. D-Mich., crafted the pivotal “Stupak Amendment,” which proved crucial to passing the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare. The amendment would erect an additional firewall into the health-care package to bar the use of federal dollars for abortion services.
“I hope you die,” said one caller to Stupak’s office.
Meantime, outside the Capitol, demonstrators hectored members of the Congressional Black Caucus like Reps. John Lewis, D-Ga., and Andre Carson, D-Ind., with the “N” word. Lewis, a civil rights hero, said he hadn’t heard language like that “since the march to Selma.”
A profanity-laced message left for then-Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio, expressed disappointment that she failed to break her back when hit by a car while jogging.
Someone spat on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo.,  as he walked to the Cannon House Office Building across the street from the Capitol. An ordained United Methodist minister, an incensed Cleaver confronted the spitter. U.S. Capitol Police briefly detained the man in question until Cleaver asked the cops to release the subject.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was speaker at the time and responsible for ushering ObamaCare to passage. She said she witnessed this sort of provocative talk “myself in the late ‘70s in San Francisco.” When asked about the tone, Pelosi said, “It created an environment in which violence took place.”
Pelosi said the tinderbox culminated in the assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first, openly gay elected official in the U.S.
“Words have power. They weigh a ton,” Pelosi said. She noted that some words whip certain people into a frenzy “depending on their, shall we say, emotional state.”
There was no physical violence on Capitol Hill toward lawmakers once the House and Senate approved the final version of the ACA. But concern and fear permeated the Capitol. Members of the House Democratic Caucus convened a meeting with top U.S. Capitol Police officials to express safety concerns. Things were so tense that then-Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Terry Gainer issued a memo to the Senate community, urging lawmakers and staffers to “remain vigilant.”
This is the responsibility which accompanies the words.
“Lock her up!” was the chant about Clinton at the Republican convention in Cleveland.
In one skillful pivot, Trump responded from the convention lectern to his partisans.
“Let’s defeat her in November,” Trump swiveled.
Some political observers would assert that’s the responsible way for a politician to slyly rotate the rhetoric. Use words to defect --  yet brilliantly refocus the debate at the core task at hand.
But in most cases, it’s Trump firing verbal Sidewinder missiles.
So this is about words. Words made Trump. Words may undo Trump.
For months, there was speculation that Trump would tone things down and appear more “presidential” once he entered the general election. Trump’s now signaled he is who he is and says what he says.
Words are the tool of a politician. Just like someone in an artisan trade, each uses their tools in their own way to hone their craft.
And so does Trump.

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Clinton camp: Mills potential conflict of interest 'absurd'

The Untouchables.

Hillary Clinton's campaign is questioning a report about a top aide to Clinton when she was secretary of state also conducting interviews for the Clinton Foundation, saying implications about a potential conflict of interest are “absurd.”
Then-Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills took an Amtrak train from Washington to New York City in June 2012 to interview two executives to potentially become the foundation’s next leader, sources told CNN, which first reported the story.
Clinton purportedly accepted the secretary of state post in 2009 in part on the condition that any foundation activity would neither “create conflicts nor the appearance of conflicts” of interest for her.
The CNN report doesn’t state Mills broke any rules but suggested her interviewing trip has added to the “blurred lines” between Clinton’s government work and non-government activities, which have long created problems for her and husband President Bill Clinton.
Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server as secretary of state to send and receive official emails has also added to that perception.
The Clinton campaign said Friday that Mills “volunteered her personal time” and paid for her own travel to New York City.

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“And it was crystal clear to all involved that this had nothing to do with her official duties,” the campaign said. “The idea that this poses a conflict of interest is absurd."
Mills' attorney also purportedly said such work was voluntary.
The foundation did not immediately respond to a FoxNews.com request Saturday for comment.
The CNN report comes the same week as a new batch of Clinton emails seemed to show foundation donors got preferential treatment during Clinton’s tenure at the State Department.
Conservative watchdog Judicial Watch released the 44 new email exchanges, which the group says were not in the original 30,000 handed over to the State Department. Clinton has repeatedly claimed she turned over all work-related emails during the now-closed probe into her private server use.
The documents challenge Clinton's insistence that there was "no connection" between the foundation and her work at the State Department.
In one email exchange, Doug Band, an executive at the Clinton Foundation, tried to put billionaire donor Gilbert Chagoury -- a convicted money launderer -- in touch with the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon because of the donor’s interests there.
And a report this week by The Daily Caller says that several investigations are  being launched, including one led by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara of the Civil Frauds Unit that will focus on the foundation's dealings in New York. The agency has declined to comment.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has also tried to get answers about Mills' New York trip. Grassley sent Secretary of State John Kerry a letter in January about the issue.

Pelosi says already getting 'obscene and sick' messages after cell phone number, email address released

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Saturday that she has received “obscene and sick” calls, voicemails and text messages after a hacker posted the private cell phone numbers and email addresses of roughly 200 current and former congressional Democrats.
“Please be careful not to allow your children or family members to answer your phone or read incoming text messages,” Pelosi wrote in a letter to colleagues. “This morning, I am changing my phone number and I advise you to do so as well.”
The contact information was part of a large computer-content dump Friday and the most recent in a series of cyberattacks on Democratic Party organizations, including the Democratic National Committee, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Pelosi said she was flying from Florida to California on Friday when she heard that the information had been posted by the hacker or hackers known as "Guccifer 2.0."
She also confirmed that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has hired a cybersecurity firm to conduct an investigation of the breach, purportedly part of a Russian cyber-attack that Pelosi has termed “an electronic Watergate break-in.”
Pelosi added that the chief information security officer of the House, in coordination with Capitol Police, has sent communications to those people whose email addresses have been made public about how to address the problem. The chief administrative officer of the House has also sent an email stating that the House computer system has not been compromised, but urged members and staff to be vigilant about opening emails and websites.

The DCCC is also issuing similar guidance.
Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., was also holding a conference call with lawmakers on Saturday evening along with cybersecurity experts who have been investigating and responding to the breach.

"This is a sad course of events, not only for us, but more importantly for our country," Pelosi said in urging lawmakers to join the conference call with Lujan.

Coverage of Trump controversies raises questions about media

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The 5 Kinds of Republicans Who Are Defecting From the Party of Trump

The political news this week is being dominated by reports of elephants breaking away from the herd: Republicans who are not supporting Donald Trump for president. They are most often being differentiated by exactly what they are saying or not saying: Some are simply refraining from opportunities to endorse their nominee; some are publicly refusing to endorse their nominee; a few are going to vote for the Libertarian or a last-minute conservative independent or write-in candidate; and a steadily increasing number are going over the brink to support Hillary Clinton, as one might expect with Election Day fast approaching. There’s no telling when the exodus will end; the latest Trump outrage, about “Second Amendment people” having some plans for HRC, is creating a fresh bout of heartburn for exasperated Republicans, and could send a new batch toward the exit ramp.

But in understanding this phenomenon and weighing its importance (or the lack thereof), it’s helpful to look at the non-endorsees and their backgrounds and motives. To that end, here’s a classification system of the five different kinds of Republicans who have broken ranks over Trump:

1. Nominal Republicans who are out of synch with their party: While they are not as plentiful as they were in the days when liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats walked the Earth, there are always some nominal partisans available, often long in the tooth, who object to the general direction of “their” party and can be rounded up to show their displeasure with a statement of dissent or a cross-endorsement. This used to be a particular cross to bear for Democrats, from the days of John Connally’s Democrats for Nixon in 1972 to Joe Lieberman’s active support for John McCain in 2008 — but Republicans are catching up.

Former South Dakota senator Larry Pressler is a good example of this breed of errant pachyderm. He endorsed Barack Obama twice, attempted a Senate comeback as an independent in 2014, and has now endorsed Hillary.

But my favorite defector of the cycle has got to be former Michigan governor William Milliken, who endorsed Clinton as a protest against Trump’s candidacy. Like Pressler, he’s a serial defector; he endorsed John Kerry in 2004, and de-endorsed John McCain late in the 2008 cycle. But to grasp how out of touch the 94-year-old Milliken is with the contemporary GOP, consider that he became governor of Michigan when George Romney resigned to join Richard Nixon’s cabinet. Enough said.

2. Lame ducks. As James Hohmann notes in the Washington Post, the willingness of current Republican elected officials to stray from party discipline is more or less in inverse relationship to their vulnerability to punishment by Republican leaders and/or angry “base” voters. So, unsurprisingly, the two most prominent defectors in the House Republican Conference — Richard Hanna, a New Yorker who has endorsed Clinton, and Scott Rigell, a Virginian who will vote Libertarian — had already announced their retirements. A Democratic precedent was Senator Zell Miller in 2004, who endorsed and spoke for George W. Bush a few months before he left Washington for good. Two years later Miller headed up something called Democrats for Santorum on behalf of the soon-to-be-defeated Pennsylvania senator; it seemed to be composed of Miller himself and his image in the mirror. But I digress …

3. Political realists. There are also Republican defectors who seem to be motivated by cold political calculation. Most obviously, Illinois senator Mark Kirk’s slim odds of reelection almost certainly depend on winning a lot of votes from people who loathe Trump. But even his Senate colleague Susan Collins, who is being treated today as a brave woman of principle for refusing to get on the Trump Train, could be thinking about her political future in Maine, where according to Hohmann she could be contemplating a gubernatorial run as an independent.

More famously, Ted Cruz is clearly calculating his “vote your conscience” statement at the Republican convention will look infinitely better if and when Trump goes down to a catastrophic defeat, leaving his own self as the front-runner for 2020. John Kasich and Ben Sasse could be making similar calculations about their political futures.

4. Redundants. In many respects the most sympathetic group of Republican defectors are former environmental, immigration, and trade-policy officials who obviously have no place in a party led by Donald Trump. I mean, really: Let’s say you are Robert Zoellick, once George W. Bush’s United States Trade Representative. Trump is accusing you and people just like you of deliberately selling American workers down the river and destroying the country in close concert with the godless Clinton administration globalists in the other party (on top of that, Zoellick ran the World Bank and worked for Goldman Sachs!). Are you going to blandly endorse him or fight to win “your” party back? It’s a pretty easy call. The same is true of Republicans closely identified with comprehensive immigration reform and strong environmental regulation (e.g., former EPA director Christine Todd Whitman, who has indicated she will vote for Clinton).

5. Assorted elites. For most of the rest of the elite defectors, the emphasis should be on the word “elite.” They are mostly former appointed officials in Republican administrations who have since moved on to life in that floating stratosphere of policy mavens, think tankers, lobbyists, and Cabinets-in-waiting. They are heavily found on that list of 50 Republican foreign-policy experts calling for Trump’s defeat.

Some are actually “redundants” associated with past Republican policies Trump has denounced (you can add the Iraq War to the list above). Others know there is no way they will have a place in, or even access to, a Trump administration. Still others simply have a reciprocal assessment of Trump as a loser. They are mostly sincerely angry about what is happening to their party, and plan to have a future role in the GOP when the “fever” has broken. What they all have in common is that they will never, ever have to deal with Republican primary voters, other than at a safe distance.

The key question to ask with all five groups of Republican defectors is whether they represent a significant group of rank-and-file Republican voters, who have for the most part been more likely to stick with Trump than elected officials and other elites have been. That’s not the only measurement of the value of defectors; sometimes independent voters can be swayed by these kind of negative testimonials for a major-party candidate, and there are financial considerations as well, since wealthy donors prefer some cover before abandoning a party nominee. But it will be interesting to find out whether the party has truly left the defectors behind, or if instead they are simply a party-in-exile that will hold the reins long after Donald Trump has left politics like a bad circus leaving town.

Donald Trump’s Other Campaign Foe: The ‘Lowest Form of Life’ News Media

Donald J. Trump was on the defensive all week, battered from all sides for his heated statements hailing the Second Amendment and linking political opponents to the Islamic State.

But on Friday morning, Mr. Trump rose early to strike back at his favorite adversary.

“Ratings challenged @CNN reports so seriously that I call President Obama (and Clinton) ‘the founder’ of ISIS,” Mr. Trump fumed on Twitter shortly after dawn. “THEY DON’T GET SARCASM?”

He soon fired off another gibe. “I love watching these poor, pathetic people (pundits) on television working so hard and so seriously to try and figure me out,” Mr. Trump taunted. “They can’t!”

Hacker posts contact information for almost 200 congressional Democrats

A hacker or group of hackers using the name "Guccifer 2.0" posted the private email addresses and cell phone numbers of almost 200 current and former Democratic members of Congress Friday.
The disclosure is the latest dump of information stolen in recent cyberattacks on a number of Democratic Party organizations, including the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).
Guccifer 2.0 posted a spreadsheet containing the contact information of 193 current and former Democratic House members as part of a larger document dump on his personal blog. In an accompanying blog post, Guccifer said accessing the DCCC server "was even easier than in the case of the DNC breach."
Included in the spreadsheet were the cell phone numbers of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md.
The Wall Street Journal reported that it was able to reach Hoyer at the cell phone number listed on the spreadsheet. Hoyer said he was not aware that the information had been stolen or posted online.

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"I imagine a lot of people are going to change their cellphone numbers pretty soon," Hoyer said.
The spreadsheet also included contact information for members of various House national security committees, including the House Intelligence Committee, the House Armed Services Committee and the House Foreign Relations Committee.
"This is sensitive information and it could be used in a very detrimental way by a foreign government," Hoyer told the Journal.
The DCCC said in a statement that it was aware that the documents had been released and were "investigating their authenticity."
There was no immediate comment from Pelosi's office or the White House.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, said late Friday that he had "every confidence that law enforcement will get to the bottom of this, and identify the responsible parties. And when they do, I hope the Administration will disclose who is attempting to interfere with the American political process, and levy strong consequences against those responsible."

Intelligence officials believe that the cyberattacks on the DNC and DCCC were likely carried out by hackers affiliated with the Russian government. The Journal reported that at least one cybersecurity company has said there appear to be links between the Kremlin and the entity identifying itself as Guccifer 2.0, though the hacker or hackers have denied this claim.

Sue Obama administration to block Internet grab, group urges

A coalition of technology groups and conservatives wants Congress to sue to stop the Obama administration from handing over control of Internet domain names to an international board, charging it could give authoritarian regimes power over the web.
Since 1998, an arm of the U.S. Commerce Department called the National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) has handled domain names. However, in September, the Obama administration plans to allow the U.S. government’s contract to lapse so the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will be run by a global board of directors with the domain-naming responsibility. Many fear this will allow governments such as Russia, China and Iran to have a stake in Internet governance and the “de facto” power to tax domain names and stifle free speech.
Congress twice included riders in appropriations bills to expressly prohibit tax dollars from being used for the transition, which President Obama signed into law. So, if the Obama administration allows the contract to lapse in September it could mark yet another questionable executive action by the administration.
That’s part of the reason the tech groups and conservatives are asking House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., and other congressional leaders to support litigation, similar to that which the House took against the Obama administration regarding unauthorized spending on Obamacare in a 2014 lawsuit.
“Suing to enforce the appropriations rider and extending it through FY2017 are amply justified by the extraordinary importance of the constitutional principle at stake,” the coalition letter says.
The letter also says that the Obama administration has not ensured the United States will maintain ownership of domain names .mil or .gov for military and government websites.
“Without robust safeguards, Internet governance could fall under the sway of governments hostile to the freedoms protected by the First Amendment,” the letter says. “Ominously, governments will gain a formal voting role in ICANN for the first time when the new bylaws are implemented.”
Speaker Ryan’s office referred questions on the matter to the House Judiciary Committee, which did not immediately respond to FoxNews.com for this story.
TechFreedom spearheaded the letter signed by 26 organizations, including Protect Internet Freedom, Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights and Americans for Tax Reform; and 11 individuals such as TechFreedom President Berin Szóka; National Bloggers Club President Ali Akbar and Cliff May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
“Congress twice told the White House to pause the transition, yet the Commerce Department is blatantly ignoring the law,” Szóka said in a statement. “Congress cannot just let this slide. It must defend the Constitution’s separation of powers, which gives the ‘power of the purse’ to the House. That means making clear to the administration that the House will sue if NTIA does not extend the contract.”
However, the Obama administration contends it isn’t bound by the appropriation bills.
“The law prohibits NTIA from using appropriated funds to ‘relinquish the responsibility during fiscal year 2016, with respect to Internet domain name system functions,’” NTIA spokeswoman Juliana Grunewald told FoxNews.com. “However, the law does not prohibit NTIA from evaluating a transition proposal or engaging in other preparatory activities related to the transition. In fact, Congress directed NTIA to conduct a thorough review of any proposed transition plan we receive and to provide Congress with quarterly updates on the transition, which we have done.”
Gruenwald noted that a number of organizations have supported the transition, such as Freedom House, the Internet Society, the Internet Association, Computer and Communications Industry Association and the Internet Infrastructure Association.
The Obama administration announced in 2014 it planned to let the contract between the Commerce Department and ICANN expire at the end of fiscal year 2016, allowing the operating of the Internet absent the U.S. government.
The coalition letter continues by warning that the ICANN structure will have a tough time holding board members and staff accountable.
“ICANN has already morphed from the technical coordinating body set up in 1998 into something much more like a government: It has the de facto power to tax domain names,” the letter says. It adds, “There are good reasons to worry about what it may do with this power absent the incentive for self-restraint created by its contract with the U.S.”
Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah and James Lankford of Oklahoma have sponsored the Protecting Internet Freedom Act to prevent the transition.
In June, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., the chairmen of the Judiciary Committees of their respective chambers, wrote to Assistant Commerce Secretary Larry Strickling, stating the transfer would be illegal.
“As we are sure you are aware, it is a violation of federal law for an officer or employee of the United States government ‘to make or authorize an expenditure or obligation exceeding an amount available in an appropriation or fund for the expenditure or obligation,’” the letter says. “It is troubling that NTIA appears to have taken these actions in violation of this prohibition.”
In a letter of response on Aug. 10, Strickling told the lawmakers they had a “misunderstanding” of the transition.
“Free expression exists and flourishes online not because of perceived U.S. government oversight over the [domain name system], or because of any asserted special relationship that the United States has with ICANN,” Strickling said in the letter. “It exists and is protected when stakeholders work together to make decisions.”

Video: Clinton Foundation was used as a slush fund.

Video of Judge Jeanine 

 Clinton Foundation was used as a slush fund.

Bernie Cartoons

Sen. Bernie Sanders buys lakefront home for nearly $600,000

Sanders brands himself a Democratic socialist

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the tribune of working people, has bought his third house for nearly $600,000.
Fresh off the presidential campaign trail, the self-described Democratic socialist bought a seasonal waterfront home on Lake Champlain in North Hero, Vermont, for $575,000.
A Sanders spokesman says the senator and his wife Jane also own a row house in Washington, D.C., and a home in Burlington, Vermont.
Jane O'Meara Sanders says her family recently let go of a home they had owned in Maine, enabling her and her husband to buy the place in the Lake Champlain islands. She says her family had owned a home in Maine since 1900 but rarely had time to go there, particularly in recent years since her parents died.

Hayes on new questions about State Dept .and Clinton Foundation overlap

The Weekly Standard’s Steve Hayes said Thursday on “Special Report with Bret Baier” that newly revealed e-mails continue to raise questions about impropriety between the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton State Department.
“This was a pay-for play-operation, basically people who solicited the Clinton Foundation, they gave money to the Clinton Foundation -- they got the State Department to weigh in on various disputes and matters, as a really routine course of action,” Hayes said.
One especially egregious example, Hayes said, was the role Clinton’s Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills played at the time.
“To have her travel to New York City for the purposes of basically interviewing two would-be leaders for the Clinton Foundation, and then to have [Clinton campaign spokesman] Brian Fallon say it was clear this had nothing to do with her official responsibilities is totally and completely preposterous on its face,” he said. “Of course it had everything to do with her official responsibilities. That's precisely why they sent her.”

Trump, Clinton spar over economic plans in dueling speeches

Looks Like a President :-)

The 2016 presidential rivals set aside their latest campaign controversies Thursday to trade jabs on jobs, taxes and the economy -- with Donald Trump casting Hillary Clinton as bad for the housing industry and the Democratic nominee accusing her opponent of offering "no credible plans" for working Americans.
Clinton also tried to out-tough Trump on trade, vowing to beef up enforcement on trade rules and punish countries that violate them.
"Mr. Trump may talk a big game on trade, but his approach is based on fear, not strength," Clinton said in Michigan. "If Team USA was as fearful as Trump, Michael Phelps and Simone Biles would be cowering in the locker room, afraid to come out to compete."
Trump delivered an economic speech of his own earlier this week in Michigan. On Thursday, he also spoke to the National Association of Home Builders in Miami Beach, Fla., and decried the Obama administration’s increase in regulations on building properties.
“In the last five years, regulations on building … have increased by 29 percent,” he said.
Trump cited his family’s history in the industry and regaled the crowd with anecdotes of his father Fred’s homebuilding exploits. He told the association, though, that the regulation situation would only get worse if Clinton is elected in November.

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“And I will say this, and I say this to you very strongly, if short-circuit Hillary Clinton ever gets elected, it's only going to be worse. It is going to get worse. It's going to be four more years of Obama but it will be worse because she's mandated to go to the left, because 45 percent of Bernie's people -- they want her to head in that direction,” he said.
Clinton, meanwhile, detailed her economic package in a speech in Detroit, calling for the largest investment package since World War II, a "patriotic tax code" that would punish those companies sending jobs abroad, broadband in every home by 2020 and making America a “green energy super power.”
She also reached out to disenfranchised Republicans by saying “a big part of our plan will be unleashing the power of private sector to create more jobs at higher pay.”
She cited analysis that found Trump’s positions would lose over 3 million jobs, while hers would create over 10 million.
“When it comes to creating jobs, I would argue, it’s not even close,” she said, when comparing their two plans. “He hasn't offered any credible solutions for the very real economic challenges we face.”
She also said she would oppose any trade deals that would send American jobs abroad, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Clinton has opposed the deal in its current form after once calling it a "gold standard" agreement when she was secretary of state. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe hinted last month that she may change her position when elected, although this was denied by the Clinton campaign.
“I’ll oppose it now, I'll oppose it after the election and I'll oppose it as president,” she said, also promising to stand up to China if they try and take advantage of American workers.
Clinton also took a shot at Trump for making certain items, such as suits and ties, in China and Mexico.
“One thing he could do to make America great is to make great things in America,” she joked.
Trump outlined his economic package in a speech Monday, pledging to cut taxes for businesses and workers, while proposing a three-bracket income tax system more in line with proposals by House Republicans than his previous plan. He also called for greater child care deductions for families.
Economic issues have frequently been pushed to the side amid controversies over remarks made by Trump -- as well as recurring controversies involving Clinton's email scandals and dealing between her State Department and family foundation.
At a Tuesday rally, Trump said there was no way to stop a future-President Hillary Clinton from packing the Supreme Court with anti-Second Amendment justices, “although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is…I don’t know.” Some saw the remarks as a joke about Clinton being assassinated, a claim that the Trump campaign has denied.
Trump has also faced more controversy after claiming that President Obama is “the founder” of ISIS, and Clinton its co-founder.