Trump, Clinton trade barbs over Obama 'birther' movement

Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton traded barbs Thursday over the Republican nominee’s past suggestions that President Barack Obama was born outside the U.S. and thus ineligible to be president, despite the fact that he was born in Hawaii – also known as the “birther” movement.
Trump’s campaign spokesman said the Republican candidate now believes Obama was born the U.S., but has been called upon to say so himself. Campaign spokesman Jason Miller said Trump "did a great service to the country" by bringing closure to an "ugly incident" that Trump, in fact, fueled.
"In 2011, Mr. Trump was finally able to bring this ugly incident to its conclusion by successfully compelling President Obama to release his birth certificate," Miller said.
"Mr. Trump did a great service to the President and the country by bringing closure" to the issue, he added. "Inarguably, Donald J. Trump is a closer. Having successfully obtained President Obama's birth certificate when others could not, Mr. Trump believes that President Obama was born in the United States."
Trump’s “birther” comments were long seen by some as an attempt to delegitimize the nation’s first black president and have turned off many of the African-American voters he is now attempting to court in his bid for the White House.
According to the Associated Press, the statement came after The Washington Post asked trump whether he believed Obama was born in the U.S. "I'll answer that question at the right time," Trump told the paper. "I just don't want to answer it yet."

Asked by the paper whether his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, was accurate when she said in a recent television interview that her boss now believes the president was born in the U.S., Trump responded: "It's okay. She's allowed to speak what she thinks. I want to focus on jobs. I want to focus on other things."
Clinton went on the attack Thursday night at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute over Trump’s refusal to say whether Obama was born in the U.S.
"He was asked one more time where was President Obama born and he still wouldn't say Hawaii. He still wouldn't say America," Clinton said. "This man wants to be our next president? When will he stop this ugliness, this bigotry?”
Trump fueled the “birther” movement in the days when Obama took officer. In August 2012 — more than a year after the president released the document in April 2011 — Trump was pushing the issue on Twitter, according to the AP.
"An 'extremely credible source' has called my office and told me that @BarackObama's birth certificate is a fraud," he wrote.
Trump has said repeatedly during the campaign that he no longer talks about the "birther" issue, but hasn’t retracted his previous statements.
"I don't talk about it because if I talk about that, your whole thing will be about that," he told reporters in his plane last week. "So I don't talk about it."
The Trump campaign’s statement late Thursday claims that Clinton launched the “birther” movement during her unsuccessful primary run against Obama in 2008.
"Hillary Clinton's campaign first raised this issue to smear then-candidate Barack Obama in her very nasty, failed 2008 campaign for President," the statement claims. "This type of vicious and conniving behavior is straight from the Clinton Playbook. As usual, however, Hillary Clinton was too weak to get an answer."
Clinton has long denied the claim.
Hillary For America press secretary Brian Fallon challenged Trump on Twitter to say he believed Obama was born in the U.S.
Obama had released a standard short form of his birth certificate before the 2008 presidential election. Anyone who wants a copy of the more detailed, long-form document must submit a waiver request, and have that request approved by Hawaii's health department.
In 2011, amid persistent questions from Trump about his birthplace, Obama submitted a waiver request. He dispatched his personal lawyer to Hawaii to pick up copies and carry the documents back to Washington on a plane.
The form said Obama was born at 7:24 p.m. on Aug. 4, 1961, at Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu. It is signed by the delivery doctor, Obama's mother and the local registrar.
On the day he released the document, Obama jabbed at Trump. "We're not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers," he said.

New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman Cartoons & one for Ford

Judge Nap Looks At New York State's Planned Trump Fdn Criminal Probe

New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is opening an investigation into the Donald J. Trump Foundation, Shepard Smith reported Wednesday.
In response, Trump’s campaign called Schneiderman, a vocal Hillary Clinton supporter, a “partisan hack”
“This is nothing more than a left-wing hit job designed to distract from Crooked Hillary Clinton’s disastrous week,” Trump spokesman Jason Miller said.
Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew P. Napolitano said Schneiderman is investigating an allegation of bribery by the foundation that occurred in Florida, where the group gave $25,000 to a SuperPAC supporting Sunshine State attorney general Pamela Bondi.
Bondi is a Republican and Trump supporter.
Bondi’s office was apparently investigating Trump at the time, but the investigation was curtailed around the time of the donation.
The IRS fined the DJT foundation $2,500 for the illegal gift, which the foundation said was made as a clerical error—it should have come from Trump personally rather than through his foundation.
Trump “has a long and unhappy history here in New York with Schneiderman,” Napolitano said on Shepard Smith Reporting, noting that Schniederman’s Albany office is also probing Trump University.
“I doubt that anything will come of this before Election Day,” Napolitano said.
“Don’t know where this is going to go.”

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman,Schneiderman, a supporter of Trump's Democratic rival in the presidential race, Hillary Clinton

CNN's Amanpour suggests Clinton health coverage sexist

Guy Benson: Amanpour attempted a spin on Hillary's behalf

After learning from the mainstream media during the last eight years of the Obama presidency that seemingly benign phrases and words like “Chicago,” “that one” and “golf” are now deemed racist, viewers are getting a similar lesson when it comes to Clinton coverage.
CNN host Christiane Amanpour suggested on air Monday that the heavy coverage of the Democratic nominee's health is simply sexist.
“Can’t a girl have a sick day or two?” Amanpour said, before asking: “What about Donald Trump’s tax returns, where are they?”
This was after Hillary Clinton for days experienced coughing fits on the trail and then came close to collapsing on the sidelines of a 9/11 event Sunday, before being whisked away in an SUV. Her campaign then revealed she had pneumonia, while saying she had become dehydrated and overheated.
Amanpour appealed to her colleagues to lay off.
“When it comes to overqualified women having to try a hundred times harder than underqualified men to get a break or even a level playing field, well, we know that story,” she said.
As proof that sick men can do the job of the presidency just fine, she first cited the example of President Franklin Pierce -- a mid-19^th century president who passed out in the battlefield.
As first noted by Mediaite, Amanpour cited the examples of the media covering up President Franklin Roosevelt’s debilitating polio and John F. Kennedy’s many health issues – lapses in journalism that journalists generally accept as ethically problematic today. Amanpour said these health crises did not stop them from being good presidents.
“Leading the world in sickness and in health—if the boys can do it, why not the women?” she asked.
Amanpour seemed to approve of the bygone media attitude that the public didn’t need to know their commander-in-chief was wheelchair bound (FDR) or was given an anti-psychoticfor fluctuating moods (JFK).
Years ago, Amanpour’s husband, James Rubin, was a member of Clinton’s 2008 campaign.
Amanpour did not mention how male candidates' health has been scrutinized before. 2008 Republican nominee John McCain and 1996 nominee Bob Dole were both scuritinized for their health and their age – as was President Ronald Reagan when he stood for re-election.

U.S. to Cede Control of Internet Domain Names to Global Agency

Are we facing the beginning of the end of a free and open Internet?
Chief White House Correspondent James Rosen reported on what some Republicans are describing as relinquishing control of the Internet to authoritarian regimes.
On Oct. 1, under a plan in place for two decades, the Commerce Department will cease to exercise contractual control over a Los Angeles-based non-profit called the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the entity that approves the .com's, .gov's and other Internet domain names.
Republicans in the Senate Judiciary Committee, including Ted Cruz, today grilled Commerce Department and ICANN officials about the planned transition.

House Republicans reach deal to avoid vote on impeaching IRS commissioner

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen

House Republicans reached an agreement late Wednesday to avoid a potentially divisive floor vote on impeaching IRS Commissioner John Koskinen.
The deal scraps the vote on the so-called "privileged" impeachment resolution that had been expected to take place Thursday. Instead, the House Judiciary Committee will consider Koskinen's impeachment, with the IRS boss expected to testify sometime next week.
The agreement makes it unlikely that any vote by the full House to impeach Koskinen will happen until after the November election, if at all. House Republican leadership had balked on moving forward on impeachment proceedings during an election season, arguing that an impeachment vote risked irritating voters. Others said Koskinen deserved a full House Judiciary Committee probe before embarking on the seldom-used impeachment process.
The effort by conservative Republicans flows from the IRS' 2013 admission that for several years, it had targeted Tea Party groups seeking tax exemptions for rigorous examinations.
Conservatives say Koskinen obstructed the House GOP's investigation of the treatment of tea party groups seeking tax exemptions. Koskinen and his Democratic allies say he did nothing wrong and provided Congress with all the information he had and knew about.
The conservative House Freedom Caucus, which used a procedural maneuver to force a floor vote earlier this week, celebrated the development as a victory.
"This hearing will give every American the opportunity to hear John Koskinen answer under oath why he misled Congress, allowed evidence pertinent to an investigation to be destroyed, and defied Congressional subpoenas and preservation orders," the caucus said in a statement. "It will also remove any lingering excuses for those who have been hesitant to proceed with this course of action."
But the deal came only after conservatives predicted that their impeachment resolution was going to get sidelined by Democratic and Republican opposition Thursday. Even if the House was able to send the resolution to the Senate, Democrats there have enough votes to prevent Republicans from removing Koskinen from office.
The House needs only a simple majority vote to impeach a federal official, the equivalent of an indictment. The Senate then holds a trial and needs a two-thirds majority to find the official guilty and remove him or her from office.

Pleading the 5th Cartoons

Ivanka Trump: US must 'catch up with the times' on guaranteed maternity leave

Ivanka Trump on the importance of child-care reforms

Ivanka Trump told Fox News' Megyn Kelly Tuesday night that the U.S. must "catch up with the times" and offer guaranteed paid maternity leave.
"Cost of childcare is the single largest expense affecting American families ... even exceeding housing," Trump said on "The Kelly File." "The United States is the only country in the world that does not offer guaranteed maternity care."
Ivanka Trump spoke shortly after her father, Republican nominee Donald Trump, called for guaranteeing new mothers six weeks of paid maternity leave and suggested new incentives for employers to provide their workers with childcare.
Building on earlier proposals, Trump proposed allowing families with a stay-at-home parent to deduct the average cost of child care from their taxes, as well as costs associated with caring for elderly dependent relatives. The deduction would apply only to individuals earning $250,000 or less, or $500,000 or less if filing jointly.
"The tax codes were written at a time when American women weren’t part of the work force, so there have to be reforms," Ivanka Trump said Tuesday evening. "This is what the Trump presidency promises, new solutions, fresh solutions to existing problems."

The real estate mogul also called for the creation of "Dependent Care Savings Accounts" that would allow families to set aside money to look after children or elderly parents.

The latest headlines on the 2016 elections from the biggest name in politics.

Trump's Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, has called for 12 weeks parental leave for both mothers and fathers paid for by taxes on the wealthy. In response, Ivanka Trump said that childcare was an issue "the Democrats talk about, but they don't own."

Donald Trump has credited Ivanka, the second of his three children with ex-wife Ivana, with pushing him to formulate a policy on the issue.
"She is the one who has been pushing for it so hard: 'Daddy, Daddy we have to do this,'" Trump said in Iowa earlier Tuesday. "She's very smart, and she's right."