Judge orders ethics classes for 'deceptive' DOJ attorneys

A federal judge has ordered annual ethics classes for Justice Department attorneys as a punishment for being "intentionally deceptive" during litigation over President Obama's executive immigration orders.
"Such conduct is certainly not worthy of any department whose name includes the word 'Justice,'" U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen wrote in a withering order released Thursday.
Justice Department attorneys misled the court about when the Department of Homeland Security would begin implementing President Obama's executive order granting "deferred action" to illegal immigrants whose children are citizens. In doing so, they tricked the 26 states who filed a lawsuit into "foregoing a request for a temporary restraining order," according to the judge.
The facts of the deception are not in doubt, Hanen emphasized. "[DOJ] has now admitted making statements that clearly did not match the facts," he said in the May 19 opinion, first noted by the National Law Journal. "It has admitted that the lawyers who made these statements had knowledge of the truth when they made these misstatements ... This court would be remiss if it left such unseemly and unprofessional conduct unaddressed."

As punishment, Justice Department attorneys who wish to appear in any state or federal court within the 26 states that brought the lawsuit have to undergo annual ethics training. "At a minimum, this course (or courses) shall total at least three hours of ethics training per year," he wrote.

House GOP defeats LGBT measure, Dems shout 'shame'

As Democrats shouted "shame," seven House Republicans switched their votes and defeated a measure on Thursday meant to protect gay rights.
The vote was 213-212. President Barack Obama has issued an executive order that bars discrimination against LGBT employees by federal contractors, and Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y., had offered an amendment to a spending bill that would have prohibited using taxpayer dollars to violate the order.
The vote for Maloney's amendment peaked at 217, one short of the majority needed for passage, before it began a slow, sporadic decline. Members of the Republican whip team, whose job is to round up needed votes, were stalking the House chamber's aisles where GOP lawmakers seat, openly pleading for support.
"Need two more votes," Rep. Steve Russell, R-Okla., one of the GOP whips, said loudly as he prowled among Republicans.
Democrats were outraged, loudly chanting, "shame, shame" in the House chamber. In the end, 29 Republicans joined 183 Democrats backing the measure, but it was not enough.
"This reveals them for who they are. They are bigots. They are haters," said Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y.
The No. 2 House Republican, Kevin McCarthy, rejected the suggestion the vote was held open for an inordinate time so Republicans could switch their vote.

College boots ex-Delta Force hero after complaint from LGBT activists

Jerry Boykin is the kind of man you’d want teaching your sons – a good and decent man, an honorable man – a Christian man.
For the past nine years the retired lieutenant general has taught leadership and ethics at Hampden-Sydney College, a highly regarded, all-male school based in Virginia. By many accounts – he is beloved and deeply respected by students.
Click here to join Todd’s American Dispatch: A must-read for conservatives!
But Gen. Boykin will not be returning to the classroom this fall. That’s because he tells me he's been fired.
The man who was one of the original members of Delta Force and once commanded all of the U.S. Army’s Green Berets – the man who served his nation with honor and distinction for more than 36 years – was ousted because of political correctness.
Click here to subscribe to Todd’s weekly podcast! 
In March, Gen. Boykin delivered a speech to conservatives and he referenced the national uproar over transgendered people using the ladies room.
He cracked a joke: “The first man who goes into the restroom with my daughter will not have to worry about surgery.”

Hampden-Sydney College | StartClass

Laughter ensued.
But militant LGBT activists were not laughing.
“I never said homosexuals. I never said transgenders,” he told me. “I was really talking about these perverts who would use this as a way to get into the bathrooms with our wives and daughters.”
CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO TODD'S WEEKLY PODCAST!
Boykin, who also serves as an executive vice president of the Family Research Council, tells me as many as 150 activists signed a letter written to the college demanding that he be fired.
“They claimed I was calling for violence against transgenders,” he told me. “Obviously it is not true. It was a figure of speech. It was meant to be humorous and it was humorous to the audience.”
You’d think that militant LGBT activists would enjoy a good rib-tickler. Apparently, they do not.
“Political correctness is absolutely out of control,” he said.
Boykin learned just recently that he would not be returning to the college – without warning.
“I was not given a chance to defend myself,” he said. “I was not given an opportunity to explain myself. That’s the sad part of it. The school is better than that.”
Apparently, they are not.
Unlike the cowardly actions of the school’s leadership, I decided to allow the school’s administration a chance to do what they denied to Gen. Boykin – a chance to explain what happened.
“His contract was simply not renewed,” said Thomas Shomo, the college’s director of communications. “We felt it was time academically for a change.”
Shomo said Boykin worked part time – teaching two classes a semester -- serving in a position that had been set up years ago for short-term residencies for professionals in the Wilson Center for Leadership.
So did the college have concerns about Gen. Boykin’s speech?
“Yes. They were of concern,” Shomo told me. “They appeared to advocate or approve of violence.”
But he denied the speech had anything to do with giving the boot to an American hero.
“The concerns about Jerry Boykin’s comments were not the determining factor in this decision,” Shomo said – noting that the timing of their decision was entirely coincidental.
I don’t know about you folks, but I feel like we’re knee-deep in Grade-A fertilizer.
“You know he [Boykin] is an outspoken person who has many controversial views,” Shomo said. “He has expressed those controversial views in various forms over the last nine years and the college has not reacted to those.”
Does the administration of Hampden-Sydney College truly believe that protecting women from would-be predators is a controversial view?
The general has many defenders – including former Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz.
“At a time where young people are desperately seeking hope and inspiration, you would think General Boykin would be one of their most valued faculty,” Sen. Cruz wrote on Facebook. “But instead, he fell victim to the PC police.”
FRC President Tony Perkins blasted the college’s leadership.
“What a contrast between the easily intimidated leadership of Hampden-Sydney College and men, like Gen. Boykin, who have spent their lives facing real danger so that LGBT agitators could enjoy the freedoms and rights they want to deny others,” Perkins told me.
Fred Larmore, a 1974 graduate of the college and a former board member, told me that students and alumni are furious over the decision to oust Boykin.
“General Boykin got an extremely raw deal,” he told me.
Hampden-Sydney was founded in 1776. They take great pride in their motto: “Come here as boys so you may leave as men.”
“General Boykin is the perfect example of how that happens,” Larmore told me. “He is a role model for the students. There’s no question that he’s the real deal.”
What happened to Gen. Boykin should serve as a wake-up call to every freedom-loving patriot across the fruited plain.
There is a concerted effort afoot to silence any American who cherishes traditional American values.
“They [LGBT activists] are shrewd, they are very well organized and they are unified – which is something the Church is not,” Boykin told me. “The Church is not unified. Therefore, the church fights piecemeal battles rather than doing what the LGBT community did in my case. They came together and launched a major attack and they succeeded.”
So the question at hand – my fellow Americans – is what are we going to do about it?
General Boykin plans on fighting back.
“It makes me even more determined that I’m going to do everything I can to stop men from going into bathrooms with my daughters, my wife and my granddaughters,” he said. “I am going to be a very outspoken antagonist on this issue.”
Spoken like a true American patriot.
As for Hampden-Sydney College – it seems as if their leadership places a higher value on political correctness than duty and honor. 

Facebook Mark Zuckerberg Cartoons

Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg meets with conservatives on reported bias

Matt Schlapp: I refused to be Facebook's PR pawn

LOS ANGELES –  Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday held a wide-ranging discussion with a group of conservative commentators who said afterward the Facebook CEO acknowledged the giant social network has a problem reaching conservatives.
The meeting at Facebook's Menlo Park, California, headquarters came about after a report accused the company of harboring a bias against conservative views.
S.E. Cupp, a columnist with the New York Daily News who attended the meeting, said Facebook executives "were very clear to acknowledge that there is a problem and the problem is a serious one."
Cupp said Zuckerberg, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, Vice President Joel Kaplan and board member Peter Thiel mostly listened to the 17 conservatives who attended.
While the Facebook executives did not comment further on an internal investigation into allegations of political manipulation, they explained how difficult it would be for Facebook employees to inject bias into what stories make it into the "trending topics" section of the site or on individual users' news feeds, Cupp said.
The Facebook team also said any such tampering would be "philosophically against both the mission of the company and Mark's personal mission," Cupp said. "I believed them."
Rob Bluey, editor in chief of the website The Daily Signal, made similar comments to Fox News' Greta Van Susteren shortly after the meeting ended.
"They certainly acknowledged that there was a problem with getting the message out to conservatives," he said.
Facebook spokesman Andy Stone confirmed that was the tenor of the meeting.
In a Facebook post afterward, Zuckerberg did not directly respond to allegations that Facebook employees suppressed conservative stories on its "trending topics" feature. But he said, "I know many conservatives don't trust that our platform surfaces content without a political bias."
"I wanted to hear their concerns personally and have an open conversation about how we can build trust. I want to do everything I can to make sure our teams uphold the integrity of our products," he wrote.
Among others in attendance, according to Facebook, was radio host Glenn Beck, American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks, Tea Party Patriots CEO Jenny Beth Martin and Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center.
Bozell said in a statement afterward that the meeting was "very productive."
"There has been a serious issue of trust within the conservative movement about this issue, but everyone in that room, on both sides, wants to see it restored," he said.
Zuckerberg invited the group after the tech blog Gizmodo claimed that Facebook downplays conservative news subjects on its trending feature. Facebook denied the report, which relied upon a single anonymous individual with self-described conservative leanings. The company said it is investigating the matter.
Cupp said the viewpoints of the conservatives and the Facebook executives were aligned on issues such as data security, privacy, deregulation and free markets.
"We have a lot more in common than public perception would have you believe," she said.
Facebook's trending topics are most visible on the desktop version of the social network, although it is possible to access them on mobile too.
On browsers, the topics appear on the top right corner, separate from the news feed containing updates from your friends and family. On mobile devices, users can tap on the search bar to see the top trends, but they can't see separate categories.
Topics that appear as trending can have a self-fulfilling effect, as more Facebook readers see and share the items, and other news organizations decide to write their own stories.

Fox News Poll: Trump tops Clinton

Donald Trump tops Hillary Clinton in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup, according to a new Fox News Poll that also finds majorities of voters feel both frontrunners lack strong moral values and will say anything to get elected.
Trump has a 45-42 percent edge over Clinton, if the presidential election were held today.  That’s within the poll’s margin of sampling error.  Last month, Clinton was up by 48-41 percent (April 2016).

Related Image

Expand / Contract

Clinton is ahead by 14 points among women (50-36 percent).  Yet Trump leads by a larger 22 points among men (55-33 percent).
He also tops Clinton by 37 points (61-24 percent) among whites without a college degree (working-class whites).
CLICK HERE TO READ THE POLL RESULTS
Overall, Trump is preferred by 24 points among whites (55-31 percent).  He’s even ahead by nine among white women (47-38 percent).

2016 Election Headquarters

The latest headlines on the 2016 elections from the biggest name in politics. See Latest Coverage →

Clinton has a commanding 83-point lead among blacks (90-7 percent), and is up by 39 among Hispanics (62-23 percent).
The poll includes an oversample of additional interviews among Hispanics/Latinos nationally.  Watch for more on those results Friday on FoxNewsLatino.com. 
In 2012, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney won by 20 points among whites, while President Barack Obama won blacks by 87 points and Hispanics by 44, according to the Fox News exit poll.
One reason for Trump’s showing is there is parity on party unity, as 83 percent of Democrats back Clinton and 82 percent of Republicans support Trump.
Independents go for Trump by 46-30 percent, although one in five would vote for someone else or stay home (20 percent).
Enthusiasm is on the GOP’s side, as more Republicans (74 percent) than Democrats (66 percent) say they are extremely or very interested in the presidential election.
The poll shows Bernie Sanders has a 46-42 percent advantage over Trump in a hypothetical matchup.  Sanders was up by 53-39 percent in April.  However, the Vermont senator trails Clinton in the Democratic nomination race by what is considered an insurmountable number of delegates.
The drawn-out nomination battle may hurt Clinton among the base, as 1 in 10 Sanders voters say they would pick Trump over her in November (11 percent).

Candidate Characteristics
Clinton and Trump have made quite an impression so far.  Overall, voters feel the candidates lack honesty, empathy, and strong moral values, and that they’ll say anything to win.
Clinton has a net negative honesty rating of -35 points.  That’s because a new low 31 percent say she’s honest, while a record 66 percent say she isn’t.

Related Image

Expand / Contract

Trump does better on this measure, although he is still underwater by 17 points:  40 percent think he’s honest and 57 percent say he’s not.
In addition, over half say the phrase “has strong moral values” does not describe Clinton (57 percent) or Trump (58 percent).
Many think “cares about people like me” doesn’t fit Trump (55 percent).
More voters than not think the “cares” attribute doesn’t work for Clinton either (46 percent yes vs. 51 percent no).
Clinton performs best on “is a strong leader,” although the reviews are mixed: 49 percent say it applies to her, while 50 percent say it doesn’t.
“Strong leader” is also Trump’s best trait, as 59 percent feel it describes him (38 percent disagree).
Even so, half or better say “is a reliable leader” doesn’t describe Clinton (55 percent) or Trump (50 percent).
Most think Clinton (71 percent) and Trump (65 percent) will “say anything to get elected.”  And majorities think the main reason the former secretary of state (57 percent) and businessman (56 percent) are running is for themselves -- rather than for the country.
Who is more corrupt?  By a 49-37 percent margin, voters give that dubious distinction to Clinton.

Pollpourri
What about former Republican governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson, who is favored to top the Libertarian Party ticket?  He ran in 2012 and received almost one percent of the vote nationally.

Related Image

Expand / Contract

The poll finds Johnson garners 10 percent in this hypothetical three-way matchup.  But that wouldn’t change the race, as Trump still holds the edge over Clinton:  42-39 percent.
The Fox News poll is based on landline and cellphone interviews with 1,021 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from May 14-17, 2016.  The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for all registered voters.

Trump refers to alleged Bill Clinton sexual indiscretions as 'rape'

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump used the word "rape" Wednesday evening to describe alleged sexual misconduct by former President Bill Clinton. 
Trump made the comment during an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity. The real estate mogul was answering questions about an unflattering story published this past weekend by The New York Times involving his relationships with women when he turned his attention to Bill Clinton.
"By the way, you know, it's not like the worst things, OK," Trump said. "You look at what Clinton's gone through with all of the problems and all of the things that he's done."
Hannity went on to question whether the newspaper would interview women including Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey. All three have accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct.
"In one case, it's about exposure. In another case, it's about groping and fondling and touching against a woman's will," Hannity said.
"And rape," Trump responded.

2016 Election Headquarters

The latest headlines on the 2016 elections from the biggest name in politics. See Latest Coverage →

"And rape," Hannity repeated.
In response, Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill said Trump was "doing what he does best, attacking when he feels wounded and dragging the American people through the mud for his own gain. If that’s the kind of campaign he wants to run that’s his choice."
Allegations of womanizing, extramarital affairs and abuse have trickled out over the course of Bill Clinton's political life, including what his campaign referred to as "bimbo eruptions" when he first ran for president in 1992.
More allegations of misbehavior emerged after investigators in 1997 started looking into Clinton's sexual encounters with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Clinton was impeached over the Lewinsky affair.
In 1998, he agreed to an $850,000 settlement with Jones, an Arkansas state worker, who had accused Clinton of exposing himself and making indecent propositions when Clinton was the state's governor. The settlement included no apology or admission of guilt.
Broaddrick, a nurse, in 1999 claimed she was raped by then-state Attorney General Clinton at a Little Rock hotel in 1978. Kathleen Willey, a White House volunteer, claimed Clinton fondled her when she met privately with him at the White House in 1993 to seek a job.
Clinton denied the allegations by Broaddrick and Willey.
Trump has made clear in recent weeks that he intends to make Bill Clinton's sexual history a key campaign issue, describing him at rallies and on social media as "the worst abuser of women in the history of politics" and labeling his wife an "enabler."

EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo crashes with 66 on board, officials say

An EgyptAir flight traveling to Cairo from Paris crashed early Thursday with 66 passengers and crew members on board, Egyptian aviation officials said.
Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said it was too early to say whether a technical issue or a terror attack had cause the plane to crash. He told reporters at Cairo airport, “We cannot rule anything out.”
Flight 804, an Airbus A320, was lost from radar at 2:45 a.m. Cairo time (8:45 p.m. EDT) when it was flying at 37,000 feet 175 miles north of the Egyptian coast, the airline said.
Officials from Egypt's Civil Aviation ministry said the "possibility that the plane crashed has been confirmed," as the plane failed to land in any nearby airports.
Airbus confirmed in a statement the “loss of an EgyptAir A320.”
“Airbus regrets to confirm that an A320 operated by EgyptAir was lost at around 02:30 am (Egypt local time) today over the Mediterranean Sea,” the company said. “The aircraft was operating a scheduled service, Flight MS 804 from Paris, France to Cairo, Egypt … Our concerns go to all those affected.”
EgyptAir later confirmed that a signal had been picked up from the plane two hours after it disappeared from radar, thought to have been an emergency beacon.
Hours later, Egyptian military said in a statement they didn’t receive any distress calls from the plane. However, they didn’t specify whether they were confirming the initial report that no stress call was received when the plane vanished or when an emergency signal was supposedly received two hours later.
Egyptian military aircraft and navy ships were searching for debris from the plane, which was carrying 56 passengers, including one child and two babies, and 10 crew members. EgyptAir later confirmed the nationalities of those on board as including 15 French passengers, 30 Egyptians, one Briton, two Iraqis, one Kuwaiti, one Saudi, one Sudanese, one Chadian, one Portuguese, one Algerian and one Canadian.
Greece sent two aircraft to join the search and rescue operation: one C-130 and one early warning aircraft, officials at the Hellenic National Defense General Staff said. They said one frigate was also heading to the area, and helicopters are on standby on the southern island of Karpathos for potential rescue or recovery operations.
"We are not ruling out any hypothesis," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls told reporters Thursday. "We are trying to gather all the information available." Valls later told RTL radio France was "ready" to join the search operation if Egyptian authorities requested his country's assistance.
French president Francois Hollande spoke with Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi on the phone and agreed to "closely cooperate to establish as soon as possible the circumstances" in which the EgyptAir flight disappeared, according to a statement issued in Paris.
Airbus is aware of the disappearance, but "we have no official information at this stage of the certitude of an accident," the company's spokesman Jacques Rocca said.
The Airbus A320 is a widely used twin-engine, single-aisle plane that operates on short and medium-haul routes. Nearly 4,000 A320s are currently in use around the world. The versions EgyptAir operates are equipped to carry 145 passengers.
Britain's Daily Telegraph quoted a French security source as saying "We cannot rule out the possibility of a terrorist attack." Another French official told the paper, "We would be extremely surprised and concerned if there had been a security breach at [Paris'] Charles de Gaulle [airport] ... We believe that is highly unlikely."
France remains under a state of emergency after terror attacks by ISIS killed 130 people in November.
There was no immediate comment from the U.S. government about the crash.
The Associated Press reported that around 15 family members of passengers on board the missing flight had arrived at Cairo airport Thursday morning. Airport authorities brought doctors to the scene after several distressed family members collapsed.
The incident renewed security concerns months after a Russian passenger plane was blown out of the sky over the Sinai Peninsula. The Russian plane crashed in Sinai on Oct. 31, killing all 224 people on board. Moscow said it was brought down by an explosive device, and a local branch of the extremist Islamic State group (ISIS) has claimed responsibility for planting it.
In 1999, EgyptAir Flight 1990 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near the Massachusetts island of Nantucket, killing all 217 people aboard, U.S. investigators filed a final report that concluded its co-pilot switched off the autopilot and pointed the Boeing 767 downward. But Egyptian officials rejected the notion of suicide altogether, insisting some mechanical reason caused the crash.
In March, an EgyptAir plane was hijacked and diverted to Cyprus. A man who admitted to the hijacking and was described by Cypriot authorities as "psychologically unstable" is in custody.