Roger Stone’s new book marking the 40th anniversary of the Watergate scandal.

Hillary Clinton might be hoping no one buys “Nixon’s Secrets” — Roger Stone’s new book marking the 40th anniversary of the Watergate scandal.
 Stone — a Nixon staffer who is so partisan he has a tattoo of his old boss’ face on his back — reports that Clinton was fired as a staff lawyer for the House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee for “writing fraudulent legal briefs, lying to investigators and confiscating public documents.”

Yale Law School grad Clinton was 26 in 1974 when she started working for the committee that was investigating whether or not there was enough evidence to impeach or prosecute President Nixon for the Watergate affair.
 

Hillary Clinton Faces Heat Over Paid Speeches

Hillary Clinton is facing a backlash over her paid speeches, with students at the University of NevadaLas Vegas calling on her to reject the $225,000 that the school is paying her family charity, and Republicans saying her lucrative engagements demonstrate that she is removed from everyday voters.

Mrs. Clinton, a likely 2016 presidential candidate, has been giving a mix of paid and free speeches since leaving the State Departmentearly last year. She collected $300,000 for a speech at UCLAin March, a spokesman for the school said Friday, adding that the money came from a privately funded endowment.

She has also given paid speeches at Hamilton Collegein New York and the University of Miamiwhich wouldn't disclose her fees. A Hamilton spokesman said a private endowment covered her appearance on campus last year.

The UNLVfee for her appearance this fall will go to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation

The dispute at UNLV comes as Mrs. Clinton is making the case that she can empathize with struggling American families whatever her net worth.

Earlier this month, she told an interviewer that she and her husband left the White House in 2001 "dead broke." Yet they had put together the money to buy two houses in upscale neighborhoods and were never at risk of real financial distress. In post-presidency,

Hillary Clinton before a speaking engagement earlier this year. 

Mrs. Clinton has said she was "inartful" in describing her wealth, but stressed that she has spent much of her life advocating for poorer Americans.

Mrs. Clinton plans to deliver the keynote speech at a UNLV fundraising event in October. Her appearance fee is $225,000, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Her office declined to comment on the UNLV speech. A school spokesman wouldn't confirm the amount but said such fees are paid through private donations and that no university funds are involved.

That doesn't satisfy student leaders. Earlier this month, the state's higher-education system decided to raise tuition by 17% over four years. Some students said they would like to see Mrs. Clinton donate her fee to the school.

Daniel Waqar, 19 years old, a junior at UNLV and a spokesman for the student government, said students would be sending a letter to Mrs. Clinton asking her to "donate the money back to students."

"Donating the money back would be an example of her standing for higher education and standing for students," Mr. Waqar said. The $225,000 fee is enough to award 225 students scholarships of $1,000 apiece, he noted.

EPA spends $1.6 million on hotel for ‘Environmental Justice’ conference

Bailey: "We can talk and  complain all we want to about this, but it's not going to stop until the people of America clean all of the dishonest politicians out of our government. Which means there will be no more government."

WASHINGTON –  The Environmental Protection Agency will spend more than $1 million on hotel accommodations for an “Environmental Justice” conference this fall.
The agency posted its intention to contract with the Renaissance Arlington Local Capital View Hotel for its upcoming public meeting, for which it will need to book 195 rooms for 24 days.
“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA), Office of Enforcement and Compliance, Office of Environmental Justice (OEJ) intends to award a fixed-price Purchase Order … to the Renaissance Arlington Local Capital View Hotel,” the solicitation said. “The purpose of this acquisition is to cover the cost of 195 sleeping room nights from Sept. 9 [to] Oct 2, 2014, at government rate for the 50th public meeting of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC), a federal advisory committee of the EPA.”
Rooms at the Renaissance Arlington run for roughly $349 a night. At 24 nights, the cost of 195 rooms will reach $1,633,320, or $8,376 per room.
The government per diem rate for lodging is $219 for September. If the EPA receives the per diem rate, the cost will come to $1,024,920 for the duration of their stay.
The NEJAC was established in 1993 to “obtain independent, consensus advice and recommendations from a broad spectrum of stakeholders involved in environmental justice.”
Click for more from The Washington Free Beacon.

Election-year fears slow Senate work to a halt

Bailey: "I wonder if the old tightwad millionaire has ever had to worry about a mortgage, car payments, electric, water,  gas, or food for the table? Why hell no!"

WASHINGTON –  A fear of voting has gripped Democratic leaders in the Senate, slowing the chamber's modest productivity this election season to a near halt.
With control of the Senate at risk in November, leaders are going to remarkable lengths to protect endangered Democrats from casting tough votes and to deny Republicans legislative victories in the midst of the campaign. The phobia means even bipartisan legislation to boost energy efficiency, manufacturing, sportsmen's rights and more could be scuttled.
The Senate's masters of process are finding a variety of ways to shut down debate.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., now is requiring an elusive 60-vote supermajority to deal with amendments to spending bills, instead of the usual simple majority, a step that makes it much more difficult to put politically sensitive matters into contention. This was a flip from his approach to Obama administration nominees, when he decided most could be moved ahead with a straight majority instead of the 60 votes needed before.
Reid's principal aim in setting the supermajority rule for spending amendments was to deny archrival Sen. Mitch McConnell a win on protecting his home state coal industry from new regulations limiting carbon emissions from existing power plants. McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, faces a tough re-election in Kentucky.
This hunkering down by Democrats is at odds with the once-vibrant tradition of advancing the 12 annual agency budget bills through open debate. In the Appropriations Committee, long accustomed to a freewheeling process, chairwoman Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., has held up action on three spending bills, apparently to head off politically difficult votes on changes to the divisive health care law as well as potential losses to Republicans on amendments such as McConnell's on the coal industry.
"I just don't think they want their members to have to take any hard votes between now and November," said Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb. And there's "just no question that they're worried we're going to win some votes so they just shut us down."
Vote-a-phobia worsens in election years, especially when the majority party is in jeopardy. Republicans need to gain six seats to win control and Democrats must defend 21 seats to the Republicans' 15.
So Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, probably shouldn't have been surprised when his cherished bill to fund the Labor, Education and Health and Human Services departments got yanked from the Appropriations Committee's agenda this month. Word quickly spread that committee Democrats in Republican-leaning states feared a flurry of votes related to "Obamacare."
"It's not as if they haven't voted on them before," Harkin griped. "My way of thinking is, 'Hell, you've already voted on it. Your record's there.'" Harkin blamed Senate Democratic leaders.
Two other appropriations bills have run aground after preliminary votes. The normally non-controversial energy and water bill was pulled from the committee agenda after it became known that McConnell would have an amendment to defend his state's coal mining industry. McConnell is making that defense a centerpiece of his re-election campaign and his amendment appeared on track to prevail with the help of pro-energy Democrats on the committee.
Again, after consulting with Reid, Mikulski struck the bill from the agenda.
McConnell pressed the matter the next day, this time aiming to amend a spending bill paying for five Cabinet departments. Democrats again headed him off.
Democrats privately acknowledge that they're protecting vulnerable senators and don't want McConnell to win on the carbon emissions issue. They also see hypocrisy in McConnell's insistence on a simple majority vote for his top — and controversial — priority while he wants Democrats to produce 60 votes to advance almost everything else.
Another measure, financing the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service, failed to get a committee vote last week after speeding through a subcommittee hearing. Mikulski blamed problems with timing. But it was known that Republicans had amendments on hot-button issues coming.
Fear of voting is hardly new. In the last two years of the Clinton administration, Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., blocked Democrats from offering a popular Patients' Bill of Rights, and more. At the time, Charles Schumer of New York and Dick Durbin of Illinois were among the Democrats who cried foul.
These days, Durbin and Schumer hold the No. 2 and No. 3 Democratic Senate leadership posts and now that their party is running the place, they're backing Reid's moves to clamp down on GOP amendments.
"You've always got senators on both sides of the aisle of all political persuasions and all regions whining and complaining how they don't want to vote on this amendment or that amendment," Lott says now. "It always frankly agitated me because I felt like these are big boys and girls." He said "it has gotten worse and worse and worse."
Republicans say Democratic leaders are trying especially to protect Mark Begich of Alaska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. Landrieu says she hasn't asked for such help.
"I've taken so many hard votes up here," Landrieu said. "I could take more."

King Obama

Benghazi suspect, now on U.S. soil and in federal custody, could face judge Saturday

WASHINGTON –  Ahmed Abu Khatallah, the Libyan militant charged in the 2012 Benghazi attacks, is in federal law enforcement custody and could face a judge as early as Saturday, authorities said.
Khatallah is being held at a federal courthouse in D.C. amid tight security, Department of Justice spokesman William Miller said.
He was flown to Washington by helicopter shortly after sunrise from a navy warship, where he had been held since his capture nearly two weeks ago.
Khatallah is accused of being involved in the Sept. 11, 2012 attack in Libya that led to the deaths of former U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, information officer Sean Smith, and former navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.
Stevens, 52, was the first U.S. ambassador to be killed in the line of duty since 1979.
There’s a possibility that Khatallah could face a federal judge Saturday afternoon for an initial court appearance at which the government would outline the charges against him.
He almost certainly would remain in detention while the Justice Department seeks a federal grand jury indictment against him.
U.S. Special Forces captured Khatallah during a nighttime raid in Libya June 15-16, marking the first breakthrough in the investigation of the Benghazi attacks.
A newly unsealed criminal complaint accuses Khatallah of killing a person during an attack on a federal facility, a crime punishable by death; providing federal support to terrorists resulting in death; and using a firearm in a crime of violence.
U.S. authorities have said they are looking to identify and capture additional co-conspirators.
Khatallah, a prominent figure in Benghazi's circles of extremists who was popular among young radicals, acknowledged in an interview with The Associated Press in January that he was present during the storming of the U.S. mission in Benghazi. But he denied involvement in the attack, saying he was trying to organize a rescue of trapped people.
Prosecuting Khatallah will be a test of the Obama administration’s commitment to try suspected terrorists in the American criminal justice system even as Republicans in Congress call for Khatallah and others to be held at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Khatallah is one of just a few cases in which the administration has captured a suspected terrorist overseas and interrogated him for intelligence purposes before bringing him to federal court to face charges.

Thad Cochran's GOP runoff victory shows new angle to minority voting

Sen. Thad Cochran's GOP primary victory, thanks in part to black Mississippians who turned out to vote for him, exemplifies a new math that politicians of all persuasions may be forced to learn as this country's voting population slowly changes complexion.
Cochran's campaign courted black voters, perceiving their unhappiness with his Tea Party-supported opponent, Chris McDaniel, and his anti-government rhetoric and scathing criticisms of President Obama. Blacks responded by turning out to help give Cochran an almost 7,000-vote win. The use of Mississippi's open primary to further their agenda showed political maturity by black voters and debunked a longstanding belief that they obediently vote Democratic and not according to their own interests.
They turned out for a primary runoff with no Democratic candidate involved. And they voted Republican even though the smart play for the Democrats would have been to usher McDaniel to victory and create a more winnable contest for Democrat Travis Childers in November.
"I think that Thad Cochran is a shot across the bow to be felt for a long time," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was the first minority presidential candidate to win a statewide primary or caucus in 1984 and 1988. "You cannot win in the new South or win in national elections with all-white primaries. This is a new America today."
Tests of this assertion are coming next month in Alabama and Georgia, also Southern states with large minority populations and open primaries. The Mississippi race may be a harbinger of more strategic voting for minority voters, especially African Americans, said D'Andra Orey, a political science professor at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi.
"This is not a one-time situation," Orey said. "Blacks do recognize their power in the vote, and in this particular case, blacks saw that they could actually defeat or be a strong influence ... in defeating McDaniel."
In Mississippi, which is 38 percent black and on track to become the country's first majority-black state, some black voters said they planned to support Cochran, a six-term incumbent, again in November. Others said they would keep their options open in November or vote for the Democrat, even though they considered Cochran a better choice than McDaniel in the red state.
"I just think that McDaniel did as much for the Cochran turnout in the black community as Cochran people did," said Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, Mississippi's sole black congressman.
Agitating minority voters may soon prove politically risky anywhere in the nation: The numbers of black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American voters are growing not only in presidential election years but in off-cycle elections as well, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
In presidential election years, the percentage of black voters eclipsed the percentage of whites for the first time in 2012, when 66.2 percent of blacks voted, compared to 64.1 percent of non-Hispanics whites and about 48 percent of Hispanics and Asians.
The number of African-American and other minority voters has also been increasing during off-cycle, non-presidential elections. For example, in the 2010 congressional and statewide elections, 47.8 percent of non-Hispanic whites, 40.7 percent of blacks, 21.3 percent of Asians and 20.5 percent of Hispanics voted.
But the only groups to increase their numbers were blacks and Hispanics, who voted at 38.6 percent and 19.3 percent respectively in 2006 congressional and statewide elections. The white and Asian participation rate dropped during that same time period from 50.5 percent and 21.8 percent.
And black participation in off-year elections has been steadily increasing since 1994, when it was 37.1 percent. In 1998, it 39.6 percent, in 2002 39.7 percent and a slight dip in 2006 at 38.6 percent. No other group showed a similar increase.
Black voting increased during the Mississippi GOP primary. Statewide turnout increased by almost 70,000 votes over the June 3 primary, with turnout in majority-black counties growing by 43 percent, while in counties where blacks are less than a majority, it grew 17 percent.
Carol M. Swain, a law and political science professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, doubted those voters would become Republicans but said they could become swing voters in some races. "I believe they may have purchased some influence with the Republican establishment that could benefit blacks in the long run," Swain said.
Democrats, in return, plan to address more African American issues in upcoming campaign, but they have been warned not to take those votes for granted. At a recent meeting with black journalists and advocates, several U.S. senators were warned that some black voters had noticed that Democrats had no problem talking about veterans' issues, women's issues or LBGT issues, but seemed hesitant to talk about and address black issues on the Senate floor.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said he could understand how "off-putting" it could be that Democrats "are all about equality and all about the big tent, but we're talking about other folks and not us," a loyal voting base.
"I hadn't really thought about our strong advocacy on these diversity issues actually could have an undercurrent of 'We must not be that important because you're not talking about us the same way,'" Kaine said.
Recognition of that can only be a good thing for minority voters, Swain said.
"The positive thing to come out of this is that more white candidates and incumbents will campaign among black voters, and maybe they will deliver more," she said.

Differences between a Democrat and Republican

Bailey: A Democrat wants someone else to take care of all their problems. A Republican believes in taking care of  the problem themselves. Simple answer to the question about why stupid lazy people like bigger government.

Democrat Hilary