Conservative Blogger
Sunday, June 26, 2016
Ann LePage, wife of nation's lowest-paid governor, takes waitressing job
Could you ever picture Hillary Clinton working as a waitress?
It was Ann LePage's first double shift at McSeagull's, a bustling restaurant touting double-wrapped bacon scallops and views of Boothbay Harbor.
The wife of Maine Republican Gov. Paul LePage had kept a low profile for the first few weeks of her summer job. But then her husband told a crowd at a recent town hall that his wife took a job to "supplement" his $70,000 salary, the lowest of any U.S. governor.
The LePages live with their dog, a Jack Russell terrier mix named Veto, in the Augusta governor's mansion and bought a $215,000 Boothbay home two years ago. The governor recently tried but failed to increase his successor's salary to $150,000, above the nearly $135,000 average for all 50 state governors in 2015.
Ann LePage said being a waitress is "something I've always, always wanted to do."
Her daughter Lauren made $28 an hour last summer at McSeagull's. LePage said she spent years taking care of her mother, who long suffered from scleroderma and passed away in October.
Now it's time to follow through on her interest, LePage said, adding: "I know she'd be proud of me."
Wearing a black McSeagull's T-shirt and sneakers with pink shoelaces, LePage greeted customers with an easy: "Hey, how are you?"
LePage, who's saving up for a Toyota RAV4, works three days a week, and is asking for more shifts.
"Because of who I am and who I'm married to, I want to work extra hard just so I can show them I can do the job," she said.
She doesn't tell customers, or co-workers, who she is unless they ask.
But when a reporter revealed her identity Thursday, the news just confirmed a customer's inklings.
"I knew, that's why I kept staring!" exclaimed Nina Stoddard, of Bridgton, a Republican.
She later wondered: "I mean, is she really here just making money?"
Her friend Laurie Green, of Casco, said she loved it.
"I really hate a lot of our politicians nowadays that have the wealth, the money," said Green, an unaffiliated voter. "They have no clue what the average person out in the world is doing."
Stoddard agreed and suggested LePage herself should run for office: "It's the best of Maine, the best of who we are. Two feet on the ground."
Top IT official: Disabling security for Clinton server laid out 'welcome mat' for hackers
A 2010 decision temporarily disabling State Department security features to accommodate Hillary Clinton’s private server effectively laid out a "welcome mat" for hackers and foreign intelligence services, a leading IT official who oversaw computer security at the Defense Intelligence Agency told Fox News.
"You're putting not just the Clinton server at risk but the entire Department of State emails at risk," said Bob Gourley, former chief technology officer (CTO) for the DIA. "When you turn off your defensive mechanisms and you're connected to the Internet, you're almost laying out the welcome mat for anyone to intrude and attack and steal your secrets."
He was referring to revelations from new court-released documents in a lawsuit by conservative watchdog Judicial Watch. They show the State Department temporarily turned off security features in 2010 so that emails from then-Secretary of State Clinton's personal server would stop going to the department's spam folders.
Gourley, who has more than two decades of cybersecurity experience and is now a partner with strategic consulting and engineering firm Cognitio, noted the Russians did breach the State Department system at some point – though it’s unclear when, and whether disabling the security functions in 2010 played a role.
He said, though, that when the Russian presence was detected in 2014, there were indications “they had been there for quite a while … [and] also hacked into unclassified systems in the White House.” He said the Russians would have tried “everything possible to get in.”
Gourley said: "A professionally run system is going to keep their defenses up all the time to at least make it hard on them.”
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The disabled software was designed to block so-called phishing emails that could insert viruses into the system. Another senior State Department official, Thomas W. Lawrence, wrote that Clinton aide Huma Abedin was personally checking in for status reports on the progress.
The State Department inspector general's report released in May found Clinton's personal server used exclusively for official State Department business violated government rules. It also reported that in early January 2011 -- a month after the security feature shut-down -- an IT worker shut down the server because he believed "someone was trying to hack us." The individual, who was not identified by name in emails released by the IG, reported a second incident only hours later, writing, "We were attacked again so I shut (the server) down for a few min."
An email also from this time period documented Clinton's concern about getting a government email account. In November 2010, Clinton wrote to Abedin: "Let's get separate address or device but I don't want any risk of the personal being accessible.” Though Clinton said all her work-related emails were turned over, this document was provided not by Clinton but by Abedin.
While Clinton swore under oath last fall all records had been provided, campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said in a statement that Clinton did not have all the emails.
"We understand Secretary Clinton had some emails with Huma that Huma did not have, and Huma had some emails with Secretary Clinton that Secretary Clinton did not have," he said. He asserted the November 2010 email shows that “contrary to the allegations of some, Secretary Clinton was not seeking to avoid any use of government email. As indicated in this email, she was open to using a state.gov account but she simply wanted her personal emails to remain private, as anyone would want."
The FBI is investigating Clinton's emails practices. Agents are looking into whether classified information was taken outside secure government channels, and whether the server was compromised by a third party. Fox News first reported in January the FBI investigation had expanded to public corruption and whether the possible “intersection” of Clinton Foundation work and State Department business may have violated public corruption laws, according to three intelligence sources.
This week, the head of WikiLeaks Julian Assange told a British television network that he was in possession of Clinton emails that have not yet been released, indicating the system was compromised.
In an interview with British Television Network ITV, Assange said he has Clinton emails that are not public, and there is "enough evidence" for criminal charges, including regarding the Clinton Foundation, though he claimed she was too protected by the Obama administration for an indictment to go forward.
"There's very strong material, both in the emails and in relation to the Clinton Foundation," Assange said.
The Clinton campaign has dismissed claims the server was compromised by a third party, including those of Romanian hacker "Guccifer." Fox News was first to report his claims that he accessed the server with ease in March 2012. The Justice Department extradited the hacker to Northern Virginia where he recently agreed in a plea deal to cooperate in future investigations and testify before a grand jury.
An NSA whistleblower said the Assange claim should be taken seriously, given WikiLeaks’ track record of releasing authentic documents.
"It just says that she put all this material on a server that was insecure, that anyone in the world could access it and break in," said Bill Binney, a former National Security Agency specialist who spoke out against the agency's broad surveillance programs. Binney was investigated by the FBI, though there was no evidence he mishandled classified information.
Binney said there is a double-standard at play in the Clinton case, given more than 2,100 emails on her server containing classified information have been identified. He called her files “vulnerable [to] attack [from] all people in the world -- hackers, governments, everybody."
No ‘Texit’: Trump says Texas ‘will never’ secede, amid renewed calls
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| Trump: Texas would never secede from US if I were president |
“Texas will never do that, because Texas loves me,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee told reporters, while touring his golf resorts in Scotland.
So-called Texas nationalists, who for years have waged a quixotic campaign to secede, swiftly seized on Thursday’s Brexit decision to demand a similar referendum, only on Texas “independence.” In the spirit of the vote, supporters like Texas Nationalist Movement leader Daniel Miller called for “Texit” -- a hashtag trending Friday on Twitter.
However, even as Britain’s vote to leave the E.U. raises the prospect of similar referendums across Europe, the push for Texas or any other state to break away from the U.S. stands little chance of succeeding. While Trump says the U.K. vote exposed an anger in the electorate that will rear its head elsewhere, he indicated he does not think that extends to any secession movement inside the United States – especially if he’s in the White House.
“Texas would never do that if I’m president,” Trump said, adding the same goes for Vermont when asked about a secessionist movement there.
Trump’s comments mark a rebuke from the candidate who has drawn explicit parallels between the anti-establishment sentiments that fueled the Brexit decision and those fueling his campaign on this side of the pond.
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The White House, in response to a petition, said three years ago that Texas simply cannot leave the union.
The state Republican Party took up this same issue at their convention just last month – and defeated a bid to get a Texas independence measure in the party platform.
The Texas Tribune, in an analysis Friday, also said that while Texas could potentially split into separate states it could not legally secede. The Tribune quoted the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who once wrote in a letter, “If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede.”
Nevertheless, Miller issued a statement Friday urging Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to call a referendum.
“The win for Brexit opens the door for Texit by establishing, concretely, that it is possible to have an adult conversation on independence and letting the people have the final say,” he said.
After winning independence from Mexico in 1836, Texas was its own republic until 1845, when it joined the U.S. Secession advocates argue the second-most populous state in the country is burdened by the federal government and has a large-enough economy to survive on its own.
Clinton campaign offers chance to see 'Hamilton'-- at a cost
WASHINGTON – Hillary Clinton supporters will get a chance to see the hit musical "Hamilton" if they're willing to pay prices that are breathtaking even by Broadway standards.
Tickets for a special matinee July 12 to benefit her campaign start at $2,700 each, while $10,000 will get a "premium seat" that includes a photo session with Clinton.
The campaign website says that for $100,000 people can get a deal that includes two premium seats, a "wrap party" with Clinton "and other special guests" plus other benefits.
The hip-hop-flavored biography about the first U.S. treasury secretary is the hardest ticket to get on Broadway, even at a record $849 for a premium ticket and even higher prices in a thriving black market.
"Hamilton" won 11 Tony Awards, including best musical.
Saturday, June 25, 2016
Cuba denies visas for House lawmakers
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| Lessons from Cuba: Why people are seduced by socialism |
Cuba is refusing to approve visa applications for members of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, according to the committee's chairman.
Members were hoping to leave on Friday afternoon to examine lagging security in the country's airports, which are set to begin making flights to the U.S. this year. The lawmakers were forced to cancel when their applications were denied that morning.
"We wanted to look at their airport security ... because TSA has been backchanneling to us that it's not adequate," said Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas. "So I attempted to go down there to just look at them, there were five of us, and they denied our visas."
Officials say Cuba is set to begin making 110 daily flights into the U.S. from 10 airports in the country this fall, but lack security measures that include scanners and bomb-sniffing dogs.
Clinton's State Dept. calendar missing scores of entries
An Associated Press review of the official calendar Hillary Clinton kept as secretary of state identified at least 75 meetings with longtime political donors, loyalists, Clinton Foundation contributors and corporate and other outside interests that were not recorded or were listed without the names of those she met.
The missing entries raise new questions about how Clinton and her inner circle handled government records documenting her State Department tenure -- in this case, why the official chronology of her four-year term does not closely mirror other more detailed records of her daily meetings.
At a time when Clinton's private email system is under scrutiny by an FBI criminal investigation, the calendar omissions reinforce concerns that she sought to eliminate the "risk of the personal being accessible" -- as she wrote in an email exchange that she failed to turn over to the Obama administration but was subsequently uncovered in a top aide's inbox.
The AP found the calendar omissions by comparing the 1,500-page historical record of Clinton's daily activities as secretary of state with separate planning schedules often supplied to Clinton by aides in advance of each day's events. The AP obtained the planning schedules as part of its federal lawsuit against the State Department. At least 114 outsiders who met with Clinton were not listed in her calendar, the AP's review found.
No known federal laws were violated and some omissions could be blamed on Clinton's highly fluid schedule, which sometimes forced cancellations at the last minute. But only seven meetings found in Clinton's planning schedules were replaced by substitute events listed on her calendar. More than 60 other events listed in Clinton's planners were omitted entirely in her calendar, tersely noted or described only as "private meetings" -- all without naming those who met with her.
Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill said Thursday night that the multiple discrepancies between her State Department calendar and her planning schedules "simply reflect a more detailed version in one version as compared to another, all maintained by her staff."
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Clinton's State Department calendar omitted the identities of a dozen top Wall Street and business leaders who met with her during a private breakfast at the New York Stock Exchange in September 2009, minutes before she appeared in public at the exchange to ring the market's ceremonial opening bell.
State Department planning schedules from the same day listed the names of all Clinton's breakfast guests -- most of whose firms had lobbied the government and donated to her family's global charity, the Clinton Foundation. The event was closed to the press and merited only a brief mention in her calendar, which omitted all the names -- among them Blackstone Group Chairman Steven Schwarzman, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi and then-New York Bank of Mellon CEO Robert Kelly.
The missing or heavily edited entries in Clinton's calendar also omitted private dinners with political donors, policy sessions with groups of corporate leaders and "drop-bys" with old Clinton campaign hands. Among those whose names were omitted from her calendar were longtime adviser Sidney Blumenthal, lobbyist and former Clinton White House chief of staff Thomas "Mack" McLarty and Clinton campaign bundler Haim Saban.
The AP first sought Clinton's calendar and schedules from the State Department in August 2013, but the agency would not acknowledge even that it had the material. After nearly two years of delay, the AP sued the State Department in March 2015. The department agreed in a court filing last August to turn over Clinton's calendar, and provided the documents in November. After noticing discrepancies between Clinton's calendar and some schedules, the AP pressed in court for all of Clinton's planning material. The U.S. has released about one-third of those planners to the AP, so far.
The State Department censored both sets of documents for national security and other reasons, but those changes were made after the documents were turned over to the State Department at the end of Clinton's tenure.
The documents obtained by the AP do not show who logged entries in Clinton's calendar or who edited material. Clinton's emails and other records show that she and two close aides, deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin and scheduling assistant Lona J. Valmoro, held weekly meetings and emailed almost every day about Clinton's plans. According to the recent inspector general's audit and a court declaration made last December by the State Department's acting executive secretary, Clinton's aides had access to her calendar through a government Microsoft Outlook account. Both Abedin and Valmoro were political appointees at the State Department and are now aides in her presidential campaign.
Unlike Clinton's planning schedules, which were sent to Clinton each morning, her calendar was edited after each event, AP's review showed. Some calendar entries were accompanied by Valmoro emails -- indicating she may have added those entries. Every meeting entry also included both the planned time of the event and the actual time -- showing that Clinton's calendar was being used to document each meeting after it ended.
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