Conservative Blogger
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Obama scolds heckler at gay pride reception, saying 'You're in my house'
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama took on a heckler head-on at a gay pride month reception at the White House Wednesday, scolding the protester for being disrespectful in "my house."
The heckler had interrupted Obama's remarks by protesting the detention and deportation of gay, lesbian and transgender immigrants.
The president responded, "Hold on a second." When the heckler persisted, Obama, flashing an exasperated look, countered, "OK, you know what?" Wagging his finger and shaking his head, Obama said, "No, no, no, no, no," repeating the word more than a dozen times.
As the heckler continued to talk over him, Obama took it up a notch.
"Hey. Listen. You're in my house," he said to laughter and woos from the crowd. "You know what? It's not respectful when you get invited to somebody. You're not going to get a good response from me by interrupting me like this. I'm sorry. I'm sorry ... Shame on you, you shouldn't be doing this."
In his remarks, Obama said that regardless of how the Supreme Court rules in an upcoming decision on gay marriage, there has been an undeniable shift in attitudes across the country. He said he's closely watching the decisions the high court will announce in the coming days, which include a case that could affirm the right of gay couples nationwide to marry.
The president singled out discrimination facing transgender Americans as an area where more progress needs to be made.
Debate over rebel flag widens to include all symbols of Confederacy
The debate over the rebel flag that began anew after last week's church shootings in Charleston, S.C., has morphed into a full-blown Confederate controversy.
While Stars and Bars have long been associated by many with slavery, the latest campaign to remove Confederate emblems has extended beyond the flag to statues, memorials, parks and even school mascots. Never has the debate over what symbolizes heritage and what stands for hate covered so much ground, as efforts to strip icons that have been part of the visual and cultural landscape of the South for decades are afoot at national, state and local levels.
In one Arkansas town, the school board voted unanimously Tuesday to ban the song "Dixie" for the next school year and phase out “Rebel,” the school’s mascot.
“It came to our attention that the public has been pretty upset about the Confederate flag, which has already been removed, the rebel mascot [and] the playing of the ‘Dixie,’” Fort Smith, Ark., school board member Susan McFerran told reporters after the board voted for the changes.
“They are part of our history and not all of our history is dandelions and butterflies.”In Maryland, Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamentz is pushing a plan that would change the name of Baltimore's Robert E. Lee Park. A spokesman for Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake told The Associated Press she supports the name change and is willing to work with the county to find an appropriate alternative.
- Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C.
Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Tennessee have called for a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and early Ku Klux Klan leader, to be removed from an alcove outside the Senate chambers. The bust, with the words “Confederate States Army” engraved on it, has been at the state Capitol for decades.
A group of Kentucky officials, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, want to kick a statute of Confederate leader Jefferson Davis out of the state Capitol rotunda, and activists in Minnesota have demanded a lake named after John C. Calhoun, a senator and vice president from South Carolina who supported slavery, be re-christened.
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There's a new move to change the name of Baltimore's Robert E. Lee Park, named for the legendary Confederate general.
National retailers Amazon.com, Walmart, Sears and Etsy this week all announced plans to remove merchandise depicting the Confederate battle flag.
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley called for lawmakers to remove the flag from public grounds, and in Alabama, Gov. Robert Bentley unilaterally ordered the immediate removal Wednesday of four different Confederate banners, including the battle flag, from an 88-foot-tall memorial that stands at the state Capitol entrance nearest to the governor’s office.
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Some
are calling for statues like the one of Jefferson Davis, (l.), in
Kentucky's state capitol, and Robert E. Lee, (r.), in Washington, to
come down.
At the federal level, though, there’s now talk of whether Congress should remove statues with ties to the Confederacy from the U.S. Capitol. Among those are statues of Joe Wheeler of Alabama, who is wearing a Confederate military uniform with “CSA” emblazoned on his belt buckle. Another is of South Carolina leader Wade Hampton, leader of the Confederacy and Ku Klux Klan supporter.
But some are concerned that the snowballing effort to rid the nation of Confederate symbolism is a historical whitewash.
“They are part of our history and not all of our history is dandelions and butterflies,” Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., told Fox News. “A knee-jerk reaction is not helpful.”
He later asked, “Where does it stop? Especially if you start letting people define our history.”
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June 23, 2015: Confederate flag themed stickers are displayed at Arkansas Flag and Banner in Little Rock, Ark.
“I don’t think there is a reasonable position anyone could take that says that the history of the Confederacy shouldn’t be talked about in a university or school or museum,” he told FoxNews.com, adding that the problem lies in celebrating the Confederacy, especially using taxpayer money.
Clinton aide worked on UAE project while at State Department
Hillary Clinton’s top aide Cheryl Mills held several outside roles, including a board position with a UAE-funded university in Abu Dhabi, while working as chief of staff and counselor at the State Department, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
After joining the State Department in the beginning of 2009, Mills continued to serve as general counsel for New York University for several months. She also sat on the board of the “NYU in Abu Dhabi Corporation,” the fundraising arm for the university’s UAE satellite campus. The school is bankrolled by the Abu Dhabi government and has been criticized by NYU professors and human rights activists for alleged labor abuses.
Mills resigned both positions in May 2009, according to a university spokesperson. Although she did not receive a direct salary from the Abu Dhabi board, she collected $198,000 over four months from NYU.
While the State Department told the Free Beacon that Mills did not start working as Clinton’s chief of staff until May 24, 2009, internal agency documents indicate she began months earlier.
Mills is identified as Clinton’s chief of staff in several U.S. diplomatic cables prior to May 2009. One confidential dispatch published by Wikileaks described a Feb. 5, 2009 meeting in Washington between Haitian President Rene Preval and Secretary Clinton.
“On the U.S. side, U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Janet Sanderson … Special Advisor Vicki Huddleston, and Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills joined the Secretary,” said the cable, which was sent from Hillary Clinton’s office to the U.S. embassy in Port au Prince on Feb. 11, 2009.
White House reportedly hid extent of Office of Personnel Management hack
The Obama administration reportedly concealed the true amount of information compromised by a cyberattack on the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) for several days after the initial disclosure of the hack, according to a published report.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the day after the White House admitted that hackers had breached personnel files, OPM publicly denied that the security clearance forms had been compromised despite receiving information to the contrary from the FBI. The administration did not say that security clearance forms had likely been accessed by the intruders until more than a week had passed.
A OPM spokeswoman denied the claims, telling the Journal the agency had been "completely consistent" in its reporting of the data breach.
The Journal, citing U.S. officials, reported that lengthy period between disclosures was the result of a decision taken by both White House and OPM officials to report the cyberattack as two separate breaches, one of the personnel files and one of the security clearance forms. That meant that rather than saying the hack may have compromised the information of approximately 18 million people, including some who have never worked for the government, OPM initially said that only about four million people were affected.
By contrast, the paper reports, FBI officials who had to speak to lawmakers about the incident, including director James Comey, defined the theft as the result of one breach.
On Wednesday, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz asked whether the true number of people affected could be as high as 32 million, and called for OPM Director Katherine Archuleta to step down.
In her testimony, Archuleta said the estimate of 18 million people affected "refers to a preliminary, unverified and approximate number of unique Social Security numbers in the background investigations data ... It is a number I am not comfortable with."
However, the Journal reports that in a private briefing with lawmakers Tuesday, a senior FBI official interjected and told Archuleta the number was based on OPM's own data.
Investigators believe that China was behind the cyberattack, which was discovered in April. If the security clearance forms were compromised, information about espionage operations could be exposed. Beijing has strongly denied any role in the hack.
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Most illegal immigrants from border surge skipped court date after release, records show
Stupid American Government?
But a year later, new data obtained exclusively by Fox News shows the policy isn't stopping the influx. Not only are illegal immigrant women and children continuing to cross the border in large numbers, but the majority charged with crimes aren't even showing up for court.
"That strategy is obviously a complete failure because such a high percentage of these people who were not detained have simply melted into the larger illegal population and have no fear of immigration enforcement," said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies.
Statistics released by the Department of Justice Executive Office of Immigration Review show 84 percent of those adults with children who were allowed to remain free pending trial absconded, and fewer than 4 percent deported themselves voluntarily.
The data set, requested by Fox News, underscores the dilemma facing immigration officials. While the ACLU and more than 100 lawmakers on Capitol Hill want to close federal detention centers, which they consider inhumane and unacceptable on legal and moral grounds, releasing the women and children to relatives and charities virtually guarantees they will fall off the federal government's radar.
"Now that we see that 85 percent of the people who were not detained before their immigration hearings do not show up for these hearings, that illustrates the need for detention," Vaughan said.
But others disagree. After the ACLU sued, a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction immediately halting the administration's policy of locking up asylum-seeking mothers and children. It cited a Department of Homeland Security survey of women and children in family detention. More than 70 percent claimed a credible fear of staying in their home country. The judge rejected the administration's argument that detention was necessary to prevent a mass influx of new immigrants.
"Many of these women and children are being terrorized in their own countries and that's the reason they are leaving," said Belen Robles, a trustee at El Paso Community College in Texas, speaking at the annual conference of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. "Once they get here, they need to be treated as human beings and not incarcerated or put in shelters."
The data set from the Department of Justice looks at all women and children detained from Central America beginning July 18, 2014, when Obama declared the immigrants to be an enforcement priority and ordered the courts to treat them on a priority basis.
Since then, ICE detained 83,385 adults and children, and immigration courts completed 24,842 cases. Of those, more than 64 percent, or 16,136, didn't show up for court, and fewer than 4 percent, or 908, agreed to leave voluntarily.
Among adults with children not detained, 25,000 have had their initial appearance; 13,000 are still in the system, and 12,000 have had their cases completed. Of the cases completed, 10,000 failed to appear.
But compare the number of removals for women and children who were detained against those who were not. Among those families who were allowed to remain free after their initial appearance in court, 84 percent never showed up again for their case. They remain free, scattered in cities across America. By contrast, almost all of those detained did show up before a judge.
"These figures are very strong evidence that the Border Patrol was right all along, that these people were coming because they knew they would be allowed to stay, that they were not planning to make some kind of plea for humanitarian status such as asylum," said Vaughan.
Nevertheless, immigrant advocates are trying to close down federal government detention centers and some 130 House Democrats and 33 senators called on Immigration and Customs Enforcement to stop family detention altogether. Additionally, a federal judge in California ruled that detaining immigrant children violates an existing settlement stipulating that migrant children must be released to foster care, relatives or -- if they must be held -- in the least restrictive environment possible.
"They deserve asylum. They are human beings and they deserve to be treated that way," said Victor Lopez, the mayor of Orange Cove, Calif., a small town in the Central Valley. "They should be free, and if they want to be citizens of this country, they will appear in court."
Yet, despite "credible fear" claims of violence back home, immigration judges reject that argument 92 percent of the time for adults with children. Illegal immigrants have a better chance of staying in the U.S. by running away than showing up in court.
Here's why:
-- 103 cities, towns and counties in 33 states have sanctuary policies that protect illegal immigrants from deportation.
-- Most cities and states refuse to honor "immigration detainers" -- meaning they will no longer hold criminal aliens for deportation for 48 hours for pick-up by federal authorities.
-- Total deportations to date (117,181) are the lowest in four years and 25 percent fewer than at the same time last year.
-- Of those who are deported, 98 percent are either convicted of a felony or multiple misdemeanors, or re-entered the U.S. illegally multiple times.
-- Worksite enforcement is virtually non-existent. So far this fiscal year, ICE conducted just 181 workplace audits and brought charges against just 27 employers, down from 3,127 audits in 2013 and 179 arrests. Employer fines are also down by more than 50 percent.
-- Only eight states require employers to use E-Verify, the federal database used to determine legal status.
-- 10 states issue driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, and last week, for the first time, the administration required employers accept these licenses for employment verification, in violation of the Real ID Act.
Number affected by hack soars to 18M, agency head says nobody ‘personally responsible’
Fox News has learned that the number of victims of a pair of massive cyberattacks on U.S. government personnel files has soared to at least 18 million -- but the head of the hacked Office of Personnel Management refuses to blame anyone in her agency.
"I don't believe anyone is personally responsible," OPM Director Katherine Archuleta said Tuesday.
The statement came during tense Capitol Hill testimony on a breach that seems to be growing wider by the day. Archuleta, who faced tough questioning at a House hearing last week, likewise faced angry senators on Tuesday before a Senate appropriations subcommittee.
Grilled on whether anyone takes responsibility, Archuleta said only the perpetrators should be blamed -- she said current failures result from decades of meager investment in security systems, but said changes are being made and in fact helped detect the latest breaches.
Still, the assurances are unlikely to ease concerns on Capitol Hill and among those who may have been affected. The web has expanded to include not just current and former government workers, but also those who may have applied for a government job.
The Office of Personnel Management initially estimated about 4 million current and former government workers were affected by one of the hacks. But Fox News is told by multiple sources that lawmakers have been informed the number will grow to at least 18 million -- and could, according to one source, soar to as high as 30 million.
During the Senate committee hearing on Tuesday, Archuleta testified that a second hack indeed exposed more individuals, though she said its "scope" and "impact" have not yet been determined.
She said this separate incident has affected files related to background investigations for "current, former and prospective government employees." Amid concerns that those affected have been left in the dark, Archuleta said the government would be notifying those whose information may have been compromised "as soon as practicable."
Meanwhile, she said a hacker also gained access to the agency's records with a credential used by a federal contractor. Archuleta told the Senate hearing on Tuesday that an "adversary" somehow obtained a user credential used by KeyPoint Government Solutions, a contractor based in Colorado. She didn't say specifically when that occurred or if it was related to the two cyberbreaches being discussed.
It was reported earlier that officials, in the second hack, were concerned information may have been stolen from a document known as Standard Form 86, which requires applicants to fill out deeply personal information about mental illnesses, drug and alcohol use, past arrests and bankruptcies. They also require the listing of contacts and relatives, potentially exposing any foreign relatives of U.S. intelligence employees to coercion. Both the applicant's Social Security number and that of his or her cohabitant is required.
Some officials have implicated China in at least one of the breaches. The new revelations and Tuesday's hearing come during an awkwardly timed U.S.-China economic dialogue in Washington, where Secretary of State John Kerry is participating.
There are about 2.6 million executive branch civilians, so the majority of the records exposed relate to former employees. Contractor information also has been stolen, officials have said.
Earlier, a major union said it believes the hackers stole Social Security numbers, military records and veterans' status information, addresses, birth dates, job and pay histories; health insurance, life insurance and pension information; and age, gender and race data.
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