Huckabee won't be 'baited' into Confederate flag debate, says it's not a ‘presidential’ issue

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said on Sunday he wouldn’t be “baited” into the politically charged Confederate flag debate in South Carolina, joining a group of fellow GOP White House contenders that says the state must decide.
“Everyone's being baited with this question as if somehow that has anything to do whatsoever with running for president," Huckabee, a 2008 presidential candidate and former Arkansas governor, said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "My position is it most certainly does not."
Fellow GOP candidate and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum took a similar position.
“We should let the people of South Carolina go through the process of making this decision," he said on ABC's "This Week."
Their remarks came a day after GOP presidential hopeful Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker also said South Carolina should decide whether to allow the Confederate battle flag to fly above the capital grounds.
Walker also said he would honor a request by Gov. Nikki Haley, a Republican, to reserve comment on whether the flag is a symbol of racism.
He said he would wait until after the funerals for the nine black people fatally shot Wednesday by a white man in a historic African-American church in Charleston, S.C. -- the incident that re-ignited the flag controversy.
South Carolina GOP Sen. Tim Scott, one of only two black U.S. senators, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that he also would wait until after the funerals to comment.
Flag supporters say it is a symbol of Confederate and southern heritage while critics argued it is a relic of white supremacy.
In 2000, civil right activists got the flag removed from inside the South Carolina statehouse and from atop the capitol dome. However, the flag still flies on the capital grounds in Columbia, S.C.
The controversy has since become an issue in presidential campaign politics, in large part because South Carolina is one of three early-voting states in which defeat or even a poor showing can end a White House bid.
“I don't think you could say that the presence of one lunatic racist, who everybody in this country feels contempt for, and no one is defending, is somehow evidence of the people of South Carolina," Huckabee also said Sunday, regarding the church tragedy and alleged shooter Dylann Roof. "I don't personally display it anywhere, that's the issue for the people of South Carolina."
He also said that voters don't want the presidential candidates to "weigh in on every little issue in all 50 states that might be an important issue to the people of those states, but it's not on the desk of the president."
On Saturday, GOP presidential candidate and senior GOP South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said the flag is “part of who we are,” while acknowledging it might be “time to revisit” the decision to allow it to fly over the state capitol grounds.
The same day, another Republican presidential candidate, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, touted what his state did in 2001 about the flag, a year after the South Carolina decision.
“In Florida, we acted, moving the flag from the state grounds to a museum where it belonged,” he said in a statement. “I’m confident [South Carolina] will do the right thing.”
Also this weekend, 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney called for the flag to be removed from the state capitol grounds.

Perry: 'American people are going to see a very different candidate'

Presidential candidate and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry acknowledged on Sunday that he was ill-prepared for his previous White House bid, but said he’s back in 2016 to win the election, not to make a symbolic redemption effort.
“I didn't prepare properly,” the Republican candidate told “Fox News Sunday.”  “I thought being governor of the state of Texas for 12 years was enough preparation … . Until you've done it, you don't even realize what a challenge it is, these broad array of issues that you have to have more than passing knowledge of.”
Perry said having back surgery a month before officially starting his 2012 campaign in August 2011 also was a major factor.
The recovery extended for several months, not a few weeks as expected. And Perry ended his campaign in January 2012 after having lackluster debate performances.
 “We weren’t healthy,” the 65-year old Perry said Sunday.
He also said he has learned that “it takes years” to prepare to become a serious presidential candidate and that he has sought the wisdom of such economic and foreign policy experts as former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, whose political career included time as the secretaries of state, labor and treasury and director of the Office of Management and Budget.

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“I feel very confident now sitting on the stage,” Perry said. “The American people are going to see a very different candidate than they did four years ago. … We’re going to talk about a vision for this country that is very forward leaning.”
Perry disagreed with suggestions that he’s running on a populist message similar to that of Democratic presidential candidate Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders that could alienate an array of potential backers and primary voters.
“I sound like a young man who grew up on a dryland cotton farm that understands what it's like to have to really work hard,” Perry said. “In today's world, a lot of Americans are out there and they're going, ‘Hey, wait a minute. What are these people on Wall Street getting rich for? I mean, who's going to bail me out?’ ”
Perry also dismissed the idea that his campaign could be doomed by the kind of verbal gaffes that hurt his 2012 campaign, particularly after he mistakenly called the fatal shootings last week of nine black people in a South Carolina church an “accident,” instead of “incident.”
He said voters will ultimately judge candidates on the issues.  

Controversial MIT economist Jonathan Gruber reportedly played key role in ObamaCare law

MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, who claimed the authors of ObamaCare took advantage of what he called the "stupidity of the American voter," played a much bigger role in the law's drafting than previously acknowledged, according to a published report.
The Wall Street Journal, citing 20,000 pages of emails sent by Gruber between January 2009 and March 2010, reported Sunday that Gruber was frequently consulted by staffers and advisers for both the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) about the Affordable Care Act. Among the topics that Gruber discusses in the emails are media interviews, consultations with lawmakers, and even how to publicly describe his role.
The emails were released as the Supreme Court prepares to rule on the legality of federal health insurance exchange subsidies.
The Journal reports that the officials Gruber contacted by e-mail included Peter Orszag, then the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB); Jason Furman, an economic adviser to the president; and Ezekiel Emanuel, then a special adviser for health policy at OMB.
"His proximity to HHS and the White House was a whole lot tighter than they admitted," Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R- Utah, chairman of the House oversight committee, told the Journal. "There’s no doubt he was a much more integral part of this than they’ve said. He put up this facade he was an arm’s length away. It was a farce."
"As has been previously reported, Mr. Gruber was a widely used economic modeler for administrations and state governments run by both parties—both before and after the Affordable Care Act was passed," HHS spokeswoman Meaghan Smith told the Journal in a statement. "These emails only echo old news."
Gruber became the center of a political storm in November 2014, when a video surfaced of him taking part in a 2013 panel discussion about ObamaCare. At one point, Gruber said the Obama administration wrote the bill "in a tortured way to make sure [the Congressional Budget Office] did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies ... Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass."
At the time of the controversy, President Obama referred to Gruber as "some adviser who never worked on our staff." However, the Journal reports that Gruber's emails appear to reference at least one meeting with Obama. Furthermore, one email from Jeanne Lambrew, a top Obama health adviser, thanks Gruber for "being an integral part of getting us to this historic moment", while another message from Lambrew refers to Gruber as "our hero."
Fox News previously reported that HHS retained Gruber in March 2009 on a $95,000 contract to produce "a series of technical memoranda on the estimated changes in health insurance coverage and associated costs and impacts to the government under alternative specifications of health system reform." A second contract with HHS three months later saw Gruber receive an additional $297,600.
Gruber later apologized for his comments in a December 2014 hearing before the House Oversight Committee, calling the remarks "mean and insulting."

Father's Day Cartoon

Father's Day: A dad wonders, does anyone ever get this job right?

This Father’s Day, I’ll begin with a confession: My most important job is also the one that I’m least confident I’m doing correctly.
It demands everything, guarantees nothing, frustrates completely, and challenges endlessly. The hours are around the clock, the stress is unbelievable, and the pay is lousy. It’s heavy on responsibility, light on training, fraught with worry, and overwhelming in its scope. There is no making friends, generating excuses, passing the buck or sitting on the sidelines. The praise is spotty, the criticism unavoidable, and the consequences of failing everlasting.
I’m convinced that, in the course of parenting, I make mistakes every day. If you need confirmation, ask my three kids (5, 8, 10). They’ll back me up. Although, owing to their chronic bouts with spotty hearing and selective memory, don't be surprised if they fail to mention their own misbehavior.
Oops. Can we still use the “m-word?” A generation ago, before the “wimpification” of so many of America’s parents, kids were told to be “a good boy” or “a good girl” and informed that there would be consequences if those expectations were not met.

I’ll know I’ve been successful at this gig if my kids turn out to be grateful, thoughtful and helpful. Those are lasting values, and I have to instill them.

Today, we’re far too enlightened for that brand of barbarism, and so we find it easier to excuse the mistakes and misdeeds of anyone under five feet tall by chalking it up to free expression and early leadership skills. Kids will be kids.
In those bygone days, a department store Santa Claus would still ask a child: “Have you been good this year?” Now a less judgmental Santa, who is after all on the payroll of the department stores, cuts to the chase and asks: “What do you want for Christmas?” No need to earn it. No strings attached.
As far as I can tell, my major shortcoming seems to be my inability to achieve the Goldilocks formula for parenting — not too much of this or that but just right. I’m too strict, I’m too lenient. I’m always in my kids’ face, or I’m nowhere to be found. I’m afraid that I’m not doing enough to provide my kids with a good living, but I’m also afraid of working so hard that I’m not spending enough time with them.
My college roommate’s father was a wise man. He once shared with us that the meaning of life was finding balance.
So true. But does anyone ever achieve the correct balance to parent? Honestly, I have to wonder, does any ever get this job right? Or are we just supposed to accept the mistakes as part of the process and move to the next level of the game?
Meanwhile, I wonder how my kids’ lives will be impacted by the fact that their dad is a “C-student" at parenting.
I have come to have tremendous respect for the parents of polite, responsible and well-adjusted grown children. In the last several months, I’ve sought out about a dozen or so fathers with kids in college — those near the end of the journey, and I’ve asked them a simple question: How does someone know when he has succeeded at fatherhood? The answers ran the gamut.
One father told me that it’s when your kids become adults and thank you for being there. Another said it comes at that comment when you look at your offspring and recognize that they turned out to be good people. Another said one measure of success is that your kids want to spend time with you.
For me, I’ll know I’ve been successful at this gig if my kids turn out to be grateful, thoughtful and helpful. Those are lasting values, and I have to instill them. You can easily imagine what kind of people you want your children to become or what you want them to achieve, but you also have to realize that they won’t get there organically. You have to lead the way. And that isn’t easy.
Whether my children grow up to be prosperous, healthy, or happy will have a lot to do with the decisions they make on their own. I can impact some of those decisions, but most of them will be out of my hands. There is only so much a parent can do, once free will comes into play.                                                                                                                    
Lately, I can’t shake the feeling that what my kids most need to hear is not what I’ll do for them but what I won’t do for them. Other parents will bend over backward to make excuses for their kids’ misbehavior and shortcomings, but I refuse to do that. It only hurts the kids in the long run. We’re here to raise these little people into not just bigger people but also better people, not to cover up their mistakes and smooth over their flaws.
Nor should we cater to their every whim. The more we do for our children, the less we teach them to do for themselves. I’m constantly reminding my kids that — as much as I do for them — I’m not their chef, butler, chauffeur.
Now and then, my kids will complain that they’re bored. So what? A little boredom is good since it fosters imagination and creativity. Besides, it’s not my job to entertain them. As I tell them, I‘m also not their cruise director.
I’m their dad. And — given that this is one job that, if done correctly, requires plenty of time, patience, and effort and seems to take a lifetime to perfect — that should be more than enough. 

Marquette University's decision to paint over mural of convicted cop killer draws protests

IDIOTS

More than 60 faculty and staff members at Marquette University are circulating an online petition against their own school for taking down a mural featuring convicted cop killer and the FBI’s first female most wanted terrorist, Joanne Deborah Chesimard, also known as Assata Shakur.
Shakur was part of a revolutionary extremist organization called the “Black Liberation Army.” In 1973, she shot and killed a New Jersey State Trooper at point-blank range, according to the FBI. Then she escaped from prison in 1979 and fled to Cuba, where she is still believed to be living.
The mural showed Shakur’s face with two quotes on a wall inside the Catholic institution’s “Gender and Sexuality Resource Center,” which provides “a safe and welcoming space dedicated to dialogue, growth, and empowerment around gender, sex, and sexuality,” as noted on its Facebook page.
Some faculty members are also upset because Susannah Barlow, the GSRC’s director at the time the painting went up, no longer works for the school. The university’s communications director would not specify if she was fired or resigned.
There is a petition circulating online saying Bartlow’s “relief from her position at this university greatly hinders the Marquette student body and the institution as a whole.”
The mural was originally painted, at least in part, by Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority members and went up in March. One of the quotes read, “No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes if they know that that knowledge with help set you free.”
Leona Dotson, international communications chairperson of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., confirmed in a statement the group did contribute to painting the mural, along with other university staff and students. “Unfortunately, Ms. Shakur’s entire history and background was not fully researched. If that process had occurred, she would not have been featured in the mural,” Dotson said.
When the university discovered there was a convicted cop-killer on the wall, they painted over it in May. A statement by the university said, “this is extremely disappointing as the mural does not reflect the Guiding Values of Marquette University.”
Stephen Franzoi, Professor Emeritus at Marquette’s Psychology Department, authored the petition and wrote the latest events “demand a response,” saying the university adopted “the narrative of pure vilification” by erasing the image.
“Did the administration consider the chilling impact of the erasure of the image within the context of present conversations about police brutality and black life?” the petition reads. “Were the students consulted? Were they offered an opportunity to engage?”
Franzoi told Foxnews.com he was not available for comment.
The university responded to the petition in a statement published online: “We cannot in good conscience, as a Catholic, Jesuit institution, allow for a convicted murderer and fugitive to be held up as a model for our students…The administration welcomes discussion on campus about controversial issues. The discussion about the mural should have taken place before it was created, not afterwards.”
John McAdams, associate professor of political science at Marquette University, told Foxnews.com the staff members who signed the petition are “pushing Marquette to be less and less a Catholic university, or more a citadel of secular political correctness.”
The university is now working with its advisory board to hire a new director in the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center to “build off of the current programs and continue this important work. It is essential to have a place where students can have a safe environment to explore the issues of gender and sexuality,” according to the school’s statement.

IG: Harassment complaints at State Department nearly triple under Clinton, Kerry

WASHINGTON –  Harassment complaints at the State Department nearly tripled during the years Hillary Clinton and now-Secretary John Kerry have been in charge, a new watchdog report says.
The report, released Thursday, detailed a jump in formal complaints, from 88 in 2011 to 248 in 2014.
“With a continuous increase in harassment inquires each fiscal year, the current staff risks not being able to sustain current work performance levels,” the Office of Inspector General report said.
According to the data, 38 percent of formal complaints involved alleged sex discrimination or reprisals. Forty-three percent of the complaints involved promotions and unfair hiring issues.
It's unclear whether the jump reflects more cases of alleged harassment, or a more robust effort to report them. The Office of Civil Rights attributed the increases to “improved outreach.”
“According to S/OCR, department employees are more educated about harassment strictures and more knowledgeable about the reporting process than in the past,” the report stated.
Despite the spike in harassment cases, there is no mandatory training program in place. “A significant increase in reported harassment inquiries in the Department of State over the past few fiscal years supports the need for mandatory harassment training for Department of State employees,” the report said.
In 2013, Kerry issued a statement on discriminatory and sexual harassment to employees and emphasized his commitment to prevent and eliminate discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace.
“Mandatory training for department employees would strengthen this message and ensure that all employees are aware of their responsibilities and rights,” the report stated.
State Department spokesman John Kirby defended his boss on Thursday, and said there is “nothing that Secretary Kerry takes more seriously than making sure that everybody here at the State Department is treated with dignity and respect, and he has zero tolerance for harassment of any kind, sexual or otherwise,” the Washington Times reported.
Kirby, though, stopped short of saying whether the State Department would create a mandatory harassment training program as recommended in the report.
“I’m not going to get ahead of decisions that the secretary will or won’t make about the recommendations,” he said.

WikiLeaks publishes documents revealing Saudi intrigue, unpaid limo bills

ISTANBUL –  At the Saudi Embassy in Tehran, diplomats talked about airing the grievances of disenchanted local youth using Facebook and Twitter. At the embassy in Khartoum, they reported anxiously on Iran's military aid to Sudan.
Meanwhile, the Saudi mission in Geneva got stuck dealing with a multi-million dollar limo bill racked up by a Saudi princess and her entourage.
The incidents are mentioned in diplomatic documents published Friday by WikiLeaks, only the first batch of what the transparency group says will be a much larger release. But they've already provided an unusual level of insight into day-to-day Saudi diplomacy — giving a snapshot of the lavish spending habits of senior royals and the political intrigue percolating across the Middle East.
WikiLeaks so far has published roughly 60,000 documents, of which The Associated Press only has been able to authenticate a handful. But the organization has a long track record of hosting large leaks of government material and in a statement released late Saturday the Saudi government acknowledged its diplomatic servers had been penetrated ahead of the mass disclosure.
Many of the documents reviewed by the AP appear aimed at tracking Iranian activity across the region or undermining Tehran's interests. An undated memo apparently sent from the Saudi Embassy in Tehran made note of what it called the "frustration of the Iranian citizen and his strong desire for regime change" and suggested ways to publicly expose Iran's social grievances through "the Internet, social media like Facebook and Twitter." It also suggests "hosting opposition figures overseas, coordinating with them and encouraging them to use galleries to show pictures of torture carried by the Iranian regime against people."
Saudis also kept a watchful eye on Iran's friends, real or perceived. One 2012 memo warned that Iran was getting "flirting American messages" suggesting that the U.S. had no objections to a peaceful Iranian nuclear program so long as it had guarantees, "possibly Russian ones."
Another memo, dated to 2012, accuses the United Arab Emirates of helping Russia and Iran circumvent international sanctions. A third memo — marked "top secret" — alleges that Iranian fighter jets bombed South Sudanese forces during a 2012 standoff over the oil-rich area of Heglig.
The Iranian Embassy in London did not immediately answer a request for comment Saturday.
There are many such hard-to-confirm stories in the Saudi documents.
One of the most inflammatory memos carries the claim that Gulf countries were prepared to pay $10 billion to secure the freedom of deposed Egyptian autocrat Hosni Mubarak. The memo, written on a letterhead bearing only a single palm tree and crossed blades above the words "top secret," quotes an unnamed Egyptian official as saying that the Muslim Brotherhood would agree to release Mubarak in exchange for the cash "since the Egyptian people will not benefit from his imprisonment."
Although the document is undated, the political situation it describes suggests it was drafted in 2012, when the Brotherhood appeared poised to take power. Senior Brotherhood official Mohammed Morsi served as Egypt's first freely elected president from June 2012 to July 2013 before being ousted by the military.
It's not clear if the idea of paying the Brotherhood to secure Mubarak's release ever coalesced into a firm offer. A handwritten note at the top left of the document says the ransom "is not a good idea."
"Even if it is paid the Muslim Brotherhood will not be able to do anything regarding releasing Mubarak," the note's unknown author writes. "It seems there are no alternatives for the president but to enter prison."
Still, the memo's existence adds credence to the claim made in 2012 by senior Brotherhood leader Khairat el-Shater that Saudi Arabia had offered billions of dollars in return for Mubarak's freedom — something Saudi officials hotly denied at the time.
Amid all the intrigue are other insights into Saudi attitudes abroad — especially their taste for luxury.
The AP found a 2009 invoice for an unpaid limousine bill racked up by Princess Maha Al Ibrahim, whom Saudi media identify as the wife of senior Saudi royal Abdul-Rahman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. The invoice, from Geneva-based Golden Limousine Services and addressed to the Saudi mission there, says the princess skipped town after failing to paying a first installment of 1.5 million Swiss francs ($1.4 million at the time) owed to the company and her hotel. When the bill was brought to her attention, "she declared that the amount was too high" and asked diplomats to handle the negotiations over the payment.
Louis Roulet, the administrator of the limousine service, confirmed the document's authenticity when reached by the AP and said he remembers the incident well. The total bill was "far more" than 1.5 million Swiss francs, he said, adding that it was eventually paid in full.
"We don't work with this family anymore, for the obvious reasons," Roulet said.
Still, the Algerian-born Roulet was unfazed, saying these kinds of disputes were typical of the Arab customers he dealt with.