Watchdog group reportedly calls for probe of Clinton relationship with firm tied to son-in-law

A conservative watchdog group will call for a federal investigation Monday into Hillary Clinton's actions toward a deep-sea mining company tied to her son-in-law, according to a published report.
According to Time magazine, the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), plans to file a complaint with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics alleging that Clinton gave Neptune Minerals "special access to the State Department based upon the company’s relationships with Secretary Clinton’s family members and donors to the Clinton Foundation."
The complaint comes two weeks after emails released by the State Department show that Clinton, now the Democratic presidential front-runner, ordered a senior State Department official to look into the request from Marc Mezvinsky.
Mezvinsky, a partner in a New York hedge fund and the husband of Clinton's daughter Chelsea, had received an email in May 2012 from investor Harry Siklas asking if he could help set up contacts with Clinton or other State Department officials.
That August, Clinton relayed a copy of the investor's email to Mezvinsky to Thomas Nides, then a deputy secretary of state and now vice chairman at Morgan Stanley, a major New York financial services firm. "Could you have someone follow up on this request which was forwarded to me?" Clinton asked Nides. He replied: "I'll get on it."
At the time, Clinton was advocating for an Obama administration push to win Senate approval for a sweeping law of the sea treaty. The pact would have aided U.S. mining companies scouring for minerals in international waters, but the Republican-dominated Senate blocked it.
The emails do not show whether Clinton or other State Department officials met with Siklas or with Neptune executives. Federal ethics guidelines warn government employees to "not give preferential treatment to any private organization or individual," but there are no specific provisions prohibiting officials from considering requests prompted by relatives.
In the email, Siklas also said that his then-employer, Goldman Sachs, was representing Neptune. Before joining Eaglevale, Mezvinsky had also worked for eight years at Goldman, partly during Siklas' tenure there between 2004 and 2007. Members of the influential New York firm were one of Clinton's top funders in her 2008 presidential race, giving more than $225,000 that cycle. The firm has also been a major donor to the Clinton Foundation, giving between $1 million and $5 million.
"We believe that requests like this from anyone other than Goldman Sachs and her son-in-law were not passed along," FACT Executive Director Matt Whitaker told Time, "so there was a preference given in her duty as Secretary of State in comparison to other requests."
Whitaker said the Office of Government Ethics could refer the matter to the Justice Department once it conducts an investigation into the emails.

Donald Trump: Hillary Clinton 'killed hundreds of thousands of people with her stupidity'

Donald Trump claimed Sunday that Hillary Clinton "killed hundreds of thousands of people with her stupidity" with her decisions as secretary of state, seemingly shocking his interviewer.

In a "Fox News Sunday" interview, Trump said Clinton and President Barack Obama's foreign-policy decisions in Africa and the Middle East resulted in the deaths of "hundreds of thousands" of people.

"She is the one that caused all this problem with her stupid policies. You look at what she did with Libya, what she did with Syria. Look at Egypt, what happened with Egypt, a total mess."

"She was truly — if not the — one of the worst secretaries of state in the history of the country," he added. "She talks about me being dangerous. She's killed hundreds of thousands of people with her stupidity."

Wallace pushed Trump to clarify what he meant.

"The Middle East is a total disaster under her," Trump said.

Trump was responding to an interview this week in which Clinton said Trump's plan to temporarily ban most Muslims from traveling to the US was dangerous.

"He has gone way over the line. And what he’s saying now is not only shameful and wrong — it’s dangerous,” Clinton said.

The former secretary of state said Trump's proposal "plays right into the hands of terrorists" by alienating Muslims in Western countries and framing terrorism as a clash between Islam and the West.

“I don’t say that lightly, but it does. He is giving them a great propaganda tool, a way to recruit more folks from Europe and the United States," Clinton said. "And because it’s kind of crossed that line, I think everybody and especially other Republicans need to stand up and say, ‘Enough. You've gone too far.'"

Ted Cruz poised to steal Iowa from Donald Trump

Ted Cruz shot to a 10-point lead over Donald Trump in the latestBloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll, putting him in prime position to win the first-in-the-nation Republican caucus on Feb. 1. But the Texas Senator may be even stronger than the top-line numbers suggest. A deeper look into the poll's crosstabs suggests that Cruz is poised to draw away even more of Trump's supporters—and that Trump may have difficulty luring those who currently favor Cruz.
Until now, Trump's great source of strength has been his support from voters without a college degree. One reason Trump has been able to maintain an overall lead in most national polls since last summer is that, as Ron Brownstein has pointed out, blue-collar workers have coalesced around him, while white-collar workers with at least a college degree have split their support among several candidates. However, the new Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register poll shows that Cruz, for the first time, is winning both non-college voters (Cruz 32, Trump 23, Ben Carson 13) and college voters (Cruz 29, Trump 18, Carson 12) alike.Of course, voter preference is fluid and the Iowa caucuses are still six weeks away. But Cruz's strategy of embracing, rather than attacking, Trump—even after Trump makes controversial or offensive statements—appears to have served him well, at least so far. In the new poll, respondents who say they support Trump have an extremely positive view of Cruz: 73 percent view him favorably, while 18 percent view him unfavorably. Asked to state their second-choice preference, these Trump supporters overwhelming pick Cruz (49 percent), with Rubio (16 percent) a distant second. If Trump falters or alienates his current supporters, they appear quite open to supporting Cruz.
But the reverse is less true: Cruz supporters aren't nearly as enthused at the prospect of backing Trump. Overall, they do view him positively. Sixty percent have a favorable view of Trump, versus 33 percent who view him unfavorably. Yet asked to state their second choice of candidate, Cruz supporters are about as likely to favor Ben Carson (26 percent) as they are Trump (25 percent). So Trump may have a hard time climbing back into the lead, especially if he goes on the attack against Cruz, as he did over the weekend when he told CNN he had "far better judgment than Ted."

Trump could, of course, look elsewhere to grow his support. But he may have a hard time luring people outside his base of anti-establishment male voters. Women voters, for example, could be a hard sell. Call it the "Megyn Kelly Effect": women in the poll more commonly prefer Cruz (28 percent) and Carson (16 percent) to Trump (13 percent). As strange as it may sound, maybe Trump should consider a pivot to the center and a more moderate tone.

Des Moines Register Poll Bias?

This is the kind of trash cartoons the Des Moines Register's Paper puts out.

Cruz surges to 10-point lead in Iowa poll

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has jumped businessman Donald Trump for a big lead in the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucus, according to a new Des Moines Register/Bloomberg poll released Saturday.
Cruz paces the field with 31 percent support, followed by Trump at 21 percent, and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 13 percent.

ADVERTISEMENT

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Texas) places fourth with 10 percent.

The last iteration of the poll, released Oct. 25, showed Carson with 28 percent support in the state, beating Trump out by 9 points, and Cruz with 10 percent support.

Cruz has been aggressively campaigning in the Hawkeye State, picking up key endorsements in the state earlier this week.
Fueling the anti-establishment firebrand’s 22-point ascent is his support among traditional Christian voters in the state.
He carries 45 percent of the evangelical vote in the state, as well as 39 percent of self-described tea partiers.
Twenty percent of all voters also listed Cruz as their second choice in the poll, suggesting he has a lot of untapped support and may not have peaked in the state.
Pollster Frank Luntz told the Register that it’s possible that Cruz “could win Iowa big – very big.”
As he watched his lead slip away in the state, Trump made a series of blunders that may have hastened Cruz’s rise.
The businessman attacked the Register the day before the influential newspaper released the poll, accusing the news outlet of dishonestly covering his presidential campaign.
“You have one of the most dishonest right here in your backyard,” Trump said at a rally in Des Moines on Friday. “The Des Moines Register is the worst. They’re very dishonest.”
He predicted he would not fare well in the poll, lamenting that “every time the Des Moines Register does a poll, I always do badly.”
“It’s my opinion that they don’t do it properly,” he added, suggesting the newspaper may be skewing its results.
As the poll was being released Saturday, Trump told his followers on Twitter not to trust it, pointing to a different poll that showed him up by double digits in Iowa.
Trump still polls well in the state on issues like the economy, illegal immigration and solving problems.
Forty-nine percent said they believe Trump knows how to “get things done,” while only 22 percent said the same of Cruz.
Carson led in the poll as recently as Oct. 23, when he carried 28 percent support in the state.
But amid terrorist attacks and the escalating fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the soft-spoken Carson has struggled to convince voters that he’s the best man to lead the nation during a time of war.
The poll of 400 likely Republican caucus-goers was conducted Dec. 7–10. The margin of error is 4.9 percent.

Trump slams Chief Justice Roberts' record

Chief Justice John Roberts

Donald Trump went on the offensive Saturday attacking Chief Justice John Roberts’ record on the Supreme Court telling supporters he’s “so disappointing”.
During a town hall in Aiken, S.C., the Republican front-runner gave his take on Roberts backing the 6-3 decision in King vs. Burwell earlier this year, which kept subsidies nationwide setup under the Affordable Care act, better known as ObamaCare, in place.
“ObamaCare is going down with or without Justice Roberts, if you know what I mean,” he explained.  “I will tell you this: Justice Roberts really let us down. He really let us down.”
Trump added, “I think he did that because he wanted to be popular within the [D.C.] beltway or something because he did it the first time and should have never done it and that would have killed it.” The New York real estate magnate was speaking to Roberts’ 2012 decision to support upholding the health care law’s individual mandate. 
While the businessman said he respects Roberts as a “great legal scholar,” the chief justice “knows it better than any of us— there was no legal reason,” to support the law in either case.
Other Republican White House hopefuls have echoed similar thoughts on the Supreme Court’s recent rulings.
After the 2015 decision, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said the court was full of “activist judges”. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz went even further in September saying it was a “mistake” to place Roberts on the high court.
Trump did throw his support behind at least one current justice. “Clarence Thomas, we should give him credit, he has been so consistent. He has been very, very strong.”
When pressed on the type of judges he’d appoint if elected, Trump told the crowd he would “want strongly conservative people and great scholars, legal scholars, people who follow and admire and respect our Constitution.”

California Democratic Senate candidate, Rep. Sanchez criticized for Islam remarks

A California congresswoman and U.S. Senate candidate was sharply criticized Friday after suggesting that as many as two of 10 Muslims would engage in terrorism to establish a strict Islamic state.
In response, Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez issued a statement saying the estimate did not reflect her views on the Muslim community in America, and most Muslims around the world are committed to peace.
"I believe that Muslim Americans are fully committed to the security and prosperity of our country," the statement said. "I stand with them as my fellow Americans. They are law-abiding citizens who love our country."
The episode marked another political misstep for Sanchez, who earlier this year apologized after a videotape surfaced showing her making a whooping cry in reference to Native Americans that brought her a cascade of reprimands from fellow Democrats.
In an interview with "PoliticKING with Larry King," Sanchez said between 5 percent and 20 percent of Muslims want a strict Islamic state -- or caliphate -- and would use terrorism to impose their views.
They "desire for a caliphate and to institute that in any way possible, and in particular go after what they consider Western norms, our way of life," she told King. "They are willing to use and they do use terrorism, and it is in the name of a very wrong way of looking at Islam."
The Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American Islamic-Relations called Sanchez's statement harmful and perplexing.
"Using inaccurate polls that reinforce false stereotypes about the Muslim community, at a time when right-wing bigots are calling for fascist measures against Muslims, is inexcusable," spokesman Haroon Manjlai said.
In her statement, Sanchez, an Orange County resident who sits on the Armed Services Committee, said she was referring to estimates based on limited research, and other data support far lower estimates.
Sanchez is running for the seat being vacated by retiring Democrat Barbara Boxer.

Border Patrol catches smuggler using fake agency vehicle

Texas authorities are on high alert after Border Patrol agents caught an alleged smuggler trying to disguise its SUV as one of the agency's vehicles, officials said Friday.

Border Patrol agents caught a smuggler driving a Chevy Tahoe that was painted to look like one of the agency’s vehicle, according to KRGV-TV. Vehicles are usually painted to act as delivery or telecommunications trucks to try and fool agents, but it’s unusual to see a Border Patrol vehicle to be copied.
Border Patrol in Laredo found 12 people stuffed in the back of the imposter vehicle. Agents knew the vehicle was a fake as soon as they found it.
“There’s no fender, there’s no ground effect on any of our vehicles, Omar Zamora, an agent with the Border Patrol Rio Grande Valley sector, told KRGV-TV. “They’re actually pretty bare and about as high as we get the vehicle, because we do go off road.”
Zamora said any agent would’ve recognized the SUV.
“In the 18 years that I’ve been in the Border Patrol, we’ve seen UPS, FedEx trucks, Time Warner trucks, any kind of clones. Any business you can think of. The smugglers are trying to clone it to avoid law enforcement detection,” Zamora added.
Zamora said the numbers and codes on each unit means something and was confident a clone couldn’t conceal a crime in the region.
Border Patrol said this is the first cloned unit in recent memory in the Laredo area and has urged the public to call law enforcement if they see something suspicious.