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."